open letter to the dead

a year this week since you put your head through a looped electrical cord and hung from your neck until all of the air stopped getting to your lungs and blood couldn't properly fill your head and you probably turned a lot of morbid colors perhaps jolted around some then went ever so quiet and I think of you this way. Some of the friends think it's sick or crossing the line to look at this part of it with the mind's eye but you when you sent me letters from up north that first time you went I would imagine you doing the things you wrote about. After any phone call or mailed note or bit of correspondance I would imagine you doing what you were doing, so why not this? Why not this sacred act with all of it's definitive solidity? It was a big action and you took it and why throw it from the head as different from imagining the mural you painted and you painting it or opening the secretly sent bottle of whiskey in the dry community and knowing what you would look like putting it to your mouth. For all the actions you took this last one stays with all of the others in memory forever. Am I really just supposed to keep the sweet stuff, I'm still learning from the fights and arguements and still being glad that at least you fought with me to my face finally and after all about all of those secret sins and who knows if there was any forgiveness or acceptance on either side but it's over now anyway isn't it.