525,600 minutes and counting

Every day this one moment flashes through my mind: my first steps out of the hospital one year ago today. Everything was so bright. And warm. And I remember thinking that life in that moment could not be real. I knew that this would be the first of many moments where Derek was gone.

The first few months, I had the same dream. I was at his funeral every night, only instead of standing next to his casket, like in reality, I was in line with the visitors. The line was so long. And each night, I never made it to him. The line kept going. It was torturous.

Lying in bed, I wondered how every minute could put me farther from him. I could feel the distance growing. One hour. One day. One week...One year.

Elegy for a Boy with Wheels for Feet

I.
When we were nine years old,
we built a clubhouse in the woods.

We tried to level the ground
with a foundation of plywood

and an old car tire toilet
that we rolled up the road from the junkyard.

We spent weeks between the trees,
planning our lives in silence

living together, alone, in the woods.

We buried a chipmunk
under the tree beside our 'house'

and put salt on its body
because you told us to

so the dogs would not find it
after we buried it three inches deep.

II.
I imagine you walking
in memories of our childhood.

I have forgotten that your toes had not touched
the soles of a shoe since years before,

years that sometimes, I can barely remember
because I am confused

that you were always walking,
that you were never bound to a chair

because we never saw it as such--it was your feet,
and you were walking.

IV.
I try not to step on the soft soil
and fresh grass, heavy on your tomb.
I know that you cannot feel it, but I feel bad anyway.
And I wish that you were not there.
And I wish that the grass were not so green
in a long rectangle of new beginnings
or endings.

V.
Snow kept us
from crisp air

and our clubhouse,
still plywood on the ground,

no walls, no doors,
just a hole underneath the rubber tire

too wide for our bums.
And the wagon,

wheels frozen to the ground,
that we did not retrieve in the spring

or the summer or fall
or even the next winter,

maybe even the next year.
But the dogs

uncovered the chipmunk
in a day. And Katlin cried

like the day you ran over the toad,
like the day we thought we were losing you,

like the day that we did lose you.

What happened to the snow?