What he would say:

mostly
I am afraid of those
who never leave their hearts
in their hands and always
keep them in mine

____

to stop my hands from tumbling
in trembling light
speak of foreign sighs from quiet machines

and the strange way a thumbprint
mistakes a heart

the wires will sit
in implied conversations over this

(and my voice will quit
into my stomach if left alone)

did you know?

some things
are not meant (to be mistaken) for others

and (remind me)
that all of these parentheses
are the words we forget to say

___

If you weren't dead I'd be okay, but you are, and I'm not. It's funny how time passes like molasses. I know that's fucking corny, but there isn't much I can do when cheese and crackers don't soothe me (hey, it works for him but I'm a little better than carbohydrates). I remember eleven freckles over the bridge of your nose and the twelve moles we counted that day. I still swear there were more.

This is not poetry, this is not prose. This is just reality; you're gone.

I met a boy that reminds me so much of you it scares me stupid. When I talk to him he's just like you were, charismatic to the point it makes me stutter. I don't want to leave your memory behind, but I don't want to live there any more, Stephen. A part of me died with you that day, but the rest of me is still here, and as much as I hate to admit it, I'm deteriorating like your corpse.