Ten Years Later

for Ted

When my hands are at ten and two and I’m focused straight ahead 

on the next exit, the clock, 

the sound of “mom” being called on repeat, 

it’s you that twinkles in the periphery. 

You live on in the shimmer of the leaves. 

As they grow into their great green hues, basking in the glow of sunshine; 

as they shift and change, wrapping our horizon in a reconstructed rainbow of golden, saffron and rusts; 

as they fall and meet the earth once again, 

coating her in a crunchy carpet and dancefloor; 

and eventually in their return to the ether of the natural cycle, 

fertile decay. 

You hibernate in the white noise. 

Ever present in the static and the electricity.

In the hums and the howls. 

And in the sirens. 

The fucking sirens.

You are in the beads of sweat that drip down my skin when my heart pumps enough to remind me that I’m alive! 

In the intensity of the wails of my children when they are scared, or hurt, or sick, 

or were incorrectly served their banana. 

You are in the big waves, but also in the current. 

When I inhale, 

you are riding my breath. 

You are in the glitter. 

The glitter that first glitzed a decade ago,

and 2000 miles away. 

You are glittering on, 

an infinite journey of prisms. 

And we embrace cycles; 

we rely on their steady pace and expectation. 

But you, are untethered. 

And we aren’t always capable of measuring the difference between the unseen and the divine. 

So I hide behind my sunglasses. 

And I can’t always comprehend infinity when driving the car, 

and running late, 

to the next thing on the list, 

hands at ten and two. 

But then I catch you in the periphery.