After Thomas died, and then Lev,
I remember that people spent a lot of
time talking about the life well lived but
Thomas had been a novelist/sometime-burglar and
Lev had AIDS and I know for a fact he liked
to sleep around and not tell the girls
about it, like
he was that blunt of an instrument of
God and
it suddenly occurs to me, just as it
will suddenly occur to everyone, that
I had always wanted to ask them if
they ever felt wrong or if
they ever felt like sun on glass or
if they ever felt so lost that
there were big trees outside but
so full of rot that they never
held leaves
but I kept my big mouth shut
like I always do and I liked to
listen to Lev snoring in the other room,
wrinkles by the eyes and some odd scent
always around him and I liked
Thomas' hair and I would touch it and
I would not say a word about his
robberies and that I knew he
had inadvertently pick pocketed his
own mother's wallet last Tuesday because I had
been with her while she bought
gelato and she was so sad
when she found out,
his baby photos were gone now,
and she wept like she had
really lost him.