Dad,

I begin this with a forewarning, that the following will be very selfish. I’m in a rental car in Orlando, you’re at work in downtown Seattle. There are few ways that more distance could be between us, domestically at least. Sitting here in a central Florida rainstorm, I’m now sure of why this move to NYC is most difficult, and honestly- it’s you. It’s mom. It’s Lindsey and Dave and Kimberly and Steven and this crippling fear that ill get more bad news over the phone. And here’s the selfish part…

I need you to do everything possible to make sure that doesn’t happen.

I need you to be healthy. I need you to finally get glasses that will help you see. I need you to change up your habits and what you eat. I need you to take better care of yourself.

I need all this because I need you.

I need all this because mom needs you. And Lindsey does and Kimberly does and Steven does and we need you to be the best you that’s possible. I need you because I’m terrified of not having the chance to call you and ask some stupid question about taxes or cell phones when all I really wanted was just to hear your voice. I need to be able to come home and fall asleep to keystrokes on your computer next door. I even need the times we get mad at each other because of getting lost or taking wrong turns.

I just need you. 

I know what I’m saying is selfish but I’ll never need another gift again if you can do this for me, for you, for us. Okay?

love, michael

I’ve been better love, putting foolish things aside 

I’ve been better, as you’ll be here in time

And I’ve been better love, saving change and dollars too

And I’ve been better, to be a better love for you 

And you’ve seen better love, but ill be more than meets the eye

Yeah you’ve seen better, but honey lets just take our time

Ill be better love, ill turn the hourglass upside down

We’ll be better love, whenever you come around.

You are the oxygen in this burning house I keep as home. You are the echo in this room built for solitude and silence. Hopeful like a year made of New Years Days, still all I am is pain repeating. 

What did you intend for me? 

You knew I would revel in the shallows. You knew I would holdfast to vices & voids. You knew I would keep you at a distance. I once offered inches and you took every mile.

I need another drink so I don’t start crying again. This bar echos songs that mirror my insides. I know she’ll be okay, but being born without a father…I may be able to relate. 
Mixed drinks will keep me company, a double. One for me and one for you. Another for your wife, your little boy, your unborn baby girl. 
ill always take the sad over the numb. Sadness is, at the least, a veil. 

Sean is playing a song for his baby boy, and I know it’s really you.

“Let your innocence reign, for one last refrain, before I kiss your face goodnight.”

My mom said it doesn’t make sense, and that makes me feel better because my mother knows everything there is to know, and if she doesn’t know I sure as hell can’t know. And no momma, this doesn’t make any sense at all.

“Death says hello are you ready to go…I can’t go yet without my son.”

Yesterday was supposed to be the first day of spring, but winter kept his hold on us. So lets drink, to you, and to the longest winter.

I expected his message to be plans for Austin. Everyone has so many plans- parties, shows, even anti-parties where you get massages and it’s quiet on purpose. This was anything but quiet.

A favor, if I knew anyone that could help introduce his little sister to her favorite singer because it’s all she really wanted after the news she got last year. 

I don’t know a God damn thing about cancer. I say God and I say damn because they are loud and I know that God damns cancer, and it felt like in this sense it’s okay to damn it if we were doing it together.

I don’t know what stage 3 means, I know the word inoperable and tumor together are bad and I know that people aren’t supposed to prepare for the end at twenty two years old. 

I remember all the kids I met on tour who were battling things like this. I don’t remember just one of them, I have to go through every single memory I have and recount how happy they were watching their favorite band or just being out in the sun for once. The noise gets even louder when I realize it’s possible, actually probable, that some of them are no longer fighting anymore.

So what do you do when your friend says sister and cancer and help? Because I smoked my last two cigarettes so that, for ten minutes, life would make perfect sense and no sense at the exact same time. God Damn.

“could you help me breathe again?” My lungs have been polluted with nicotine and her exhalation. She says there’s so much hope here, but i suppose my view is filtered. The secondhand creates a hue that makes it all look dismal…gray. I already left home once because of contrast. 
I want, just for once, to remember what a wildfire feels like. I want to remember what its like to wake up shameless. 
cigarettes, booze, carbon dioxide…could you help me breathe again? 

Oh foolish boy, look what you’ve done. The ground is covered with ice and snow and you wander with your boots around your neck. Frostbite, your first and only feeling since you left hope disintegrating.

Oh foolish boy. Hiding in the woods, friend to the trees and the wolves. Why do you forget your mother, your father, your sisters and your brother? 

But foolish boy, solitude won’t save you. You won’t find fulfillment…freedom in the forest. 

Foolish boy, I knew that I would find you here.

Settled in that old brick theatre, songs echo off the walls as if we’re all blind, guided only by the sound to providence. I might as well have my eyes shut, each verse sets my course better than any atlas ever could.
You are beside, incandescent, a welcomed reminder to be thankful I can see, as what an awful fortune it would be to not witness you. I wonder of your proclivity, where the symphony will lead, if the chorus could keep us.
Do you hear it, love? Do you hear the harmony you breathe?

You approached with a red umbrella, my hands numb and jacket holding rain like a drought was looming.

“England weather has gone mad again! Have you a light?”

Your hand-rolled cigarette now victim of your crimson lipstick lit up like a firework and you glowed along with it. Paired with your evergreen eyes, February looked just like Christmas Eve.

“Does that umbrella of yours have room for two?”

I am a gourd and tonight is hallow’s haunting eve,
you’ve gone and hollowed out all that was inside if me.
Take me down and out from this shallow dark display,
take away the smile you once had loved to make.
Take me from this hardened shape, and smash me to my grave
Take my remnants from the ground and sweep my walls away.
As I am just a widower, love was my lovely bride,
you’ve gone and left no trace behind, you’ve left nothing here inside
And it haunts me like you’re still beside, I know we have no further life.
No, no, we have no further life, gone away my lovely bride.