William Fargason
That was the summer I thought I was healthy enough
to come off my meds completely, and we went
to Cascades Park together to play Pokémon Go, and you
were only in town a week, for work, and were staying
in my spare bedroom. We hadn't been outside
an hour before the rain came, so typical in summer,
turning to steam before the downpour even stopped,
the steam like some ghost being swatted away
by each droplet against it, the concrete of the sidewalk
darkening its shade of grey like a man's grey trench coat
as he pulls it tight against his body, against the cold
of a New York February, which he is used to by now,
should know better than to wear this thin coat,
more decorative than anything else, on his way
to his ex-wife's house to pick up the last
of his things that she at least took the time
and care to box up before he got there. And of course
we forgot an umbrella and so were left to run
across the park in the rain, but I swear, in those
summer months, I felt a new perception lifting
—peeking behind the holy curtain of prescription—
that I hadn't felt in years, but we were there,
in the park, and you had just caught something great,
but everything for me was humming, anxiety
like a wavelength of sound. I kept rubbing my arms
as if cold. You asked if I was alright and I said
of course, of course. We were in a patch of grass near
the water, we could've been two lone fishermen, adrift
in the escape a game allows, adrift upon some high
wave that I could see had to crash, as every time
I was happy I was just waiting for that dark surge
to pull me under again, but then I caught a Cubone,
which I had never seen before, that Pokémon who wears
his mother's skull over his head, carries a femur bone
(also hers?) around as a weapon, and I thought
I had never seen a creature so steeped
in grief—everything he looks through is through
his mother's empty eye sockets, those bone holes
like glasses with the lenses punched out, knowing
he could fill her skull with his but he could not
bring her back—that walking loss, I had never felt
so close to anything before, but he could evolve,
I could evolve him in the game to the next version
of himself, I could watch her watch him grow.