You always were the later night, getting into things I couldn’t imagine because even then I just couldn’t hold
my drugs

I know my job in life is to be
Present

whether or not I like it

to pick up the phone for
                                       you calling me years after we stopped speaking still believing I could be the seed pod you needed, the bent grass in the green light or maybe that swell of sun in the lower sky

and

                                                                                                                                                                                  how cool is it that you’ve come to visit me again in dreams this time as too many birds on the high school soccer field warning me not to take that pill I got

                                                                                                                                                                           now I remember

you nodding out, your face swaddled, deep in the sweet end, finally reunited with your name, something you were truly bad at, names, that and taking care of people, but they loved you anyway, singing into my voicemail, your voice a shoot burst from a rattled husk reaching out but only late at night when you unfurled a loose sack of lab chemicals and exposed sinew, the stripped body that made you pause and the wet dirt at the side of the road that almost broke

your fall

About the Author
griffin epstein is a non-binary white settler from NYC (Lenape land) working in education, community-based research and mental health in Toronto, Canada (Dish with One Spoon/Treaty 13). They have been featured in Glad Day’s Emerging Writers Series, and their poetry has appeared in Grain Magazine, The Maynard and Plenitude, among others. griffin plays music in SPOILS, makes weird video games with shrunken studios, is a member of the eco-grief art collective The Church of Biophilia with poet Shannon Quinn and artist bryan depuy.