Don’t think i’ll ever not be one
even when the back goes before the mind and i’m in aisle 9 arguing with a teenager about fiber supplements and suddenly crying because they don’t carry dad.
I was a boy when dad looked at me, rope in hand, the knot a mess of looped embarrassment,
and said,
“boy, you’re not very salty, are you?”
and i swear to god,
i’ve been trying to earn that salt ever since.
So call me boy.
Boy when i’m on the floor, face down and sobbing for jack— my boy, my riot, my soft middle finger to the universe that left too early,
like a drumbeat with no downstroke.
Now i walk around with a ghost in my shoe and no idea how to dance anymore.
Call me boy when i get stuck in the same daydream where jack is on some interstellar skateboard, wearing a crown made of mixtapes and unspoken apologies.
He tosses me a beer that tastes like everything we never got to say, and says, “Don’t get too heavy, dad. this ain’t heaven, it’s just the white room in waiting”.
so we just sit there,
talking shit,
swapping memories like baseball cards—
me, the failed magician,
Jack, the vanished trick.
Call me boy, with a body never sacred, just a frame for grief to hang its coat on, a joke with a punchline i forgot halfway through.
Call me boy whose grief has a sense of humor that knocks before entering and always farts when leaving.
Call me boy
when i weep at dog movies
but not funerals.
Call me boy
when i stare too long at the moon
like it’s my missing report card
and then wonder,
did we really land there?
Boy like a lawnmower that only works in reverse.
Boy like a sandwich made of spite and peanut butter.
Boy like someone who thought stoic meant quiet rage earns trophies only for men.
I’m all the boys
who said, i got this
then promptly didn’t.
Who held screwdrivers like they were bones from animals they never learned to kill.
I am not very salty but i am trying.
maybe i became man too early,
Maybe i went boy again too late.
Or, maybe this is just the rot you earn when you outlive both ends of the line.
And when death comes,
i hope it’s weird.
I hope it shows up in a bathrobe,
smoking a cigar shaped like my childhood.
I hope dad’s there—
leaning against a celestial pier,
watching me tie one last knot,
and he says,
still not salty, but boy, at least you’re funny.
And when they bury me,
call me boy one last time.
Make it a joke.
Make it sting.
Make it true.