this is how I mourn you

in my dreams you come to me
a face from a picture
eyes closed with the imagined
pallid wax of death
floating
in a depth of water
you could have stood in

you grew your hair long
but never outgrew your braces
they tell me you were unhappy
I
believe them

but mostly I remember
you when you were young
when we were young
that summer we were in the same cabin
that night that we fought

you are never alive
in my dreams

somewhere in washington
you are laying in a church
you would've hated all that
I think
I never really knew you
enough to presume

in all of my dreams
when you come to me
I never cry
but last night, for the first time ever
I cried in a dream

and do you know what it was?
I had just opened a door
and seen, as if in an aquarium
you dead
floating
and I turned away
down the hall

and I saw a man who we both knew
and I shook his hand
and I looked into his eyes
and they were hurting
like us all
and I turned around
and you were gone