Jay Hopler, 1970-2022
What I didn’t know when you chose to die
At home is that your dying would become
My compass line, my all of life, that I
Would be the only midnight one to whom
You’d cry from your body’s commotion and
The one who’d haul your baffled, unstrung form
Up from a fall. I didn’t understand
That I would wipe your ass and aim your pee,
Would tender food when faltering your hand
Failed you, would try to hold your dignity
Safe inside mine impossibly, turning
All your shames to my proficiency.
Such daily transubstantiates performing
I read host back into hospice, forbidding mourning.
—
Kept mum the news until the telephone
Noise buzzed too constant to ignore, wellest-
Wishers wishing well enough but none-
Theless wanting more, wanting I guessed
The tragic tale’s conclusion. I don’t care
If that’s ungenerous. Your death
Made me ungenerous. When we shared
Your dying publicly, I didn’t understand
Your death, too, would be public, claimed as dower
By those unknowns who seemed to think they owned
You through your words. For darkling days after,
I lurked the socials, jealous and malign.
Love to his wife, instagrams one stranger.
I’m absolutely gutted, tweets another.
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