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a poem written on the eve of your funeral

maggiemac

I feel like a child, wanting to

stop tomorrow from coming,

Not understanding why my

parents won’t pick me up

from this slumber party.

I want to lean over and shake you

awake and whisper and

gossip and laugh, keeping our

voices low, not waking the others,

staying up way too long,

wrapped in our

scratchy sleeping bags,

morning never coming.


I want to tell you everything I didn't get to

this past year, when your mind

slipped back, protecting itself,

both losing the you I knew - a complex

woman, an unreliable narrator, a curator of

her own beautiful art musuem- and taking

me right back to the you I loved

so inherently- one that even on a hellava

lot of painkillers, lit up at each of her friends walking through

the hospital room door, asking each one about the

tiniest, precious memories we thought we

had lost, that came to the forefront of your mind,

even with everything else receding

in the waves.


I want to tell you everything I didn't get

to, or couldn't bring myself to, over all

these years of friendship, when you think, it's fine,

I'll finally tell you what I'm mad about in my twenties

in our fifties.

I want to tell you what I love about

you that you never believed about

yourself. I want to tell you to choose

yourself every time, over and over again.

I want to say, in an exasperated tone,

like Lucy from Charlie Brown,

"DON'T YOU KNOW YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL?!"

like an aggressive One Direction song.

I want to tell you that being boy crazy

is a legitimate, dangerous diagnosis, especially

when it's the Matty Healy variety.

I want to apologize for stealing your pink eye shadow

glitter off your vanity that time

when I was mad and sad you were moving out.

I want to show you every video of you

I took from my view, where you are so

alive, literally screaming I WANT TO LIVE LIKE

THIS ALWAYS, half-drunk at an indie concert,

lit up in stage lighting, like a Madonna in a

Renaissance painting, like a sunbeam, warming

others privileged enough to bask in your light.

I want to tell you I hate myself for playing phone tag,

for my hateful ignorance of rescheduling,

stupidly thinking we'd have forever to meet up at

another coffee shop.

I want to tell you how dare you not grow old with Holly and Tara and I,

and how dare you leave me alone with all of our inside jokes,

and how dare you not see Wicked, and do you think Ariana

is gonna make it with that weird actor, and what do you think

of Lindsey Lohan's new face, and is Blake Lively in the wrong or just

unlikeable, and how dare I will never know how you would feel

about everything I want to talk to you about.


And you'd let me say all of this, because you understood,

even at the end when you were gone in body,

because you cared more about all of us and how

we were coping than your own pain, and you'd

let me cry and then we would laugh

and cry again and then we'd take cancer, and

physically, I mean physically, rip it to shreds like a

M.A.S.H. fortune we simply reject. And then we

would go eat and eat and rue all the days that cancer

took that away from you.

Lumpia, and pizza, and popcorn, and bubble tea, and too

expensive cocktails, and exorbitant tiny bites from Vida,

and hole in the wall questionable meats, and by God,

I hope you are feasting and feasting right now.

I hope you're brushing your hair. I hope (while you always

rocked a sleek, slightly longer lob) it is jet black, with the pink streaks,

long, long, long, long with iconic curtain bangs.

I hope you're reading trash. I mean smut. smutty smut.

I don't remember if I returned your copy of Midnight Sun.

I hope you're watching absolute garbage movies,

like so bad, like ChatGPT-written Lucy Hale movies clearly

filmed in Canada calling itself NYC.

I hope you're dancing at drag shows, cup in hand, loose bills

flying, cackling with delight, up next for karoake.

I hope you're with your lola.

I hope I hear "Mags!" just once more time.

I hope you know how much we love you,

how much we miss you, how much everything changed,

how much you took with you.

But if those memories aren't here with me anymore,

I hope they're with you, and you're scrolling through them,

and laughing

and laughing.



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