For Joshua

For Joshua
Saying goodbye is like pushing
	for hysteria’s eternity
	on a cold wall that
won’t ever bother
	budging even a bit
	and taunts you like
the photographs with folded
	corners and faded tops
	that have caught fire
from staring too hard for too long.

And using your legs won’t help—
	they were supposed to
	carry you so far in
your life and support the others,
	too; too heavy to move
	and you'll break before
the wall will tiptoe toward
	maybe a more comfortable
	place just a few inches
away; inches are space to breathe in. 

A wall, like the past, cannot
	ever move; time doesn't
	deign to that, so sad-blue and
powerless it dares
	make us feel with
	a grip that’ll only
scald and not burn because
	the masochism would be
	an out and the past
does not permit us the treat. 

Listen, though, because goodbye is
	a reckoning to about-face
	and notice, then greet,
the rest of the room,
	waiting as it always has
	and true—that it's unchanged
is so full of sorrow for you,
	the fullness
	so hidden to all
those unknowing backs. 

Know that in your greeting
	you can find a way
	to cheat time in
a manner you'll need
	to make into a
	familiar friend who
you've been to hell with
	and back but you
	are here now, ringing,
the bell in conversation. 

You listen politely to
	what time has plattered
	for your counterparts
while you knowingly wait your
	turn to turn ‘round to
	that wall you know stands
behind you with illuminated and
	illuminating photographs
	whose dancing corners
will cheer you all now,

and now you have
	more eyes than just yours
	looking straight-on at the wall
that only you can see—
	and that's okay, because
	we all have walls and one day
we’ll all be walls, stationed forever: ‘o guardian—
	you melt into the frame 
	and you wear his smile
on your own face and ours, 

and you laugh, and so do we.