Embankment

Do you remember the chemical smell that hung in the air

The fall of the year you were here?

Fumes from whatever they used to disinfect the parking structures

Smeared our vision into Polaroid glimpses, made the city a toxic enclosure

Summer had ended without any answers

And now these new weird little headaches were accepted as part of our days

In a dangerous age without guides or examples

We breathed deeply and watched while the atmosphere changed

You and I lost in the embankments, hiding in the places overgrown

Stitched to your side, never realized we had to find our ways alone

Falling apart in the presence of angels, in a duplex with five other roommates and a neighbor who dumped gas in our yard

Geoff was my only friend to have left the table then and my first understanding of absence creating an incomprehensible space

I carried the still-fresh outline of his memory with me as every new thing sprouted around it, a dichotomy of excitement and loss

I tried to reflect this as best I was able, in the way I understood, in the way I knew how to

I made you a tape with the same Squarepusher song on it four times, but not in a row

To mimic the way so much was haphazard, the abundance of magic in a fragmented flow

"A Journey to Reedham (7AM Mix)," sometimes the whole thing, sometimes just a part

I remember this more than faces or people, an unchosen detail that hiccupped my heart

That song and your smile were the only things I knew that made me want to never die

In a time when life was just beginning, but death was never far from mind

You and I, feeling how a single element can alter everything

Like a lingering stare, like a scent in the air, like someone who's not there anymore