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In the pages of a Roget Thesaurus I found the birthday card
you gave me eight months before the accident:
"Though it's off to an unusual start,
I hope you have a fabulous year of joy and laughter"
and it's as though you knew the year would extend
beyond your company, that I would need
the act of laughing, cachinnation, cackle, guffaw, hee-haw
though any notion of gratification, well-being, delight,
or cheer just seems cruel
for that "year," a period of origin
stretched to its archaic form a blue moon
eon, eternity between then and now,
me and you, words reaching from a pen
you once weilded to propel my broken birthday heart
into a future of fortune
you would not live to see.