What I Go Through 2005

Over the years there are so many things that I have thought about. I always wonder if other people think the way I do. But with everything that has happened to me this year I did think of you, really.
I wondered what it was like for you to be in pain, if you thought it was the end for you, if you knew what was going on.
Brian gave me one of your earrings yesterday. I think it was the last one you wore and when I heard that he still had it, I wanted it. I wanted to have something to remember you by other than these damn memories.
I remember you and Brian playing video golf at the bar. I remember going to your apartment, you making me a cosmopolitan and us sitting sideways on your twin bed to watch X Files on your little TV in your room. I remember you making me dinner July Tenth, I think you had bought bottles of Hacker Pshorr and a lemon too, and I remember watching Pulp Fiction on a six foot projection TV... I remember the notes yo’d pass to me while I was at work, and I remember the walks we’d go on at lduring the days. I even remember once walking at lunchtime with you in the Loop, it was winter and cold and there was snow and ice everywhere, but it was starting to warm up, and the icicles on the skyscrapters were melting — one was turned to slush and fell on my head as we were walking... I was fine, but my head was soaked form an icicle falling on my head from a skyscraper. I remember you taking me on an architecture boat tour in Chicago on my birthday, and I remember you getting people to meet me out for a surprise for my 27th birthday. I remember.
But you know, we should have had more memories together you know. Maybe it’s better this way... that’s what I keep telling myself.
I have to keep telling myself things, you know to keep me sane but if they’re right and you know my thoughts then I suppose you know what I go through.
When all you’ve got are memories, don’t you have to fill your time with something?

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Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers
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