What I Do and Do Not Know

I don’t know what gave you
the courage 
to feed your fear so completely,
to let that single moment
turn eternity-permanent. 

Maybe it was the demons
who had caught you with claws
and with shudder, forced your head under
a spell that you couldn’t resist.
Maybe the despair 
said a curse that you couldn’t unhear,
and you believed it,
those lies of never and better off
that your friends never would have 
believed about you, if only you knew.
Maybe you didn’t really mean to—
you were thinking about it,
but you didn’t think that you’d do it,
until your finger slipped too close
to an accident you couldn’t undo.

Or maybe it was just a stupid mistake,
like we all make,
only bigger—
like the fib we find ourselves defending,	
the one drink too many,
the best friend unfriended,
the baby in the belly at too young an age—
you did something stupid
in the heat of a moment,
but unlike us lucky ones,
you picked the one scar
that the years don’t let go of.

I don’t know why
you left me.
I can’t even fathom
what you must have been thinking,

but I can choose what I’m going
to go on thinking about you, 
and it’s not this.
I refuse to frame your face
with a casket;
I will not define you
by your dumbest regret.

I know who you were, friend,
despite what you did once,
and that’s what I hold onto
in the aching wide space that you left.
You’re laughter that crackled
bright songs past my static,
kindness incarnate,
gentlest friend,
and with you, I could stare down
an enemy army
cause you’d have my back
no matter what attack fractured in. 

That bullet? It happened to you, yes,
but it’s not who you were. 

I know your name,
and in my memory,
you’re still shining the same.