A poem for Sebastion, who lived 14 years

There is no snow


Whenever it fell, gentle fireflies at midnight or graceful dander in midday, you were unhappy.
It was cold, perhaps. Or maybe the way that miniature ice particles feel on paws. Chill, resilient.

Leaves in the autumn, I still have pictures. We would run and jump, colliding with one another.
I always felt like we were stars in the night sky, orbiting some massive black whole superstructure.
Like brothers, our gravity wound fields between, connecting and flaring our fires brighter.

Do you remember the bonfire in the lowland that summer so long ago? My friends found you beautiful.
I realized through their eyes again, just how much I loved you. Staying up all night with us.
When even we were not so sure that we were awake, or wanted to continue to dance. To burn.
Gin and tonic and the suspended disbelief of believing in something. In the dark.

I should be grateful; we ran together for so long. Even across vast distances, continents of memory.
The air rushing past, the wind with grass scented, the flowers a splash of color in the arms of galaxies.
When I ran beside you, I could feel the earth beneath my feet. And the teeth in my mouth.
I could sense the wholeness of my being in a sunset. And the bright red burning of yours. All a wash
In the glow and background radiation of existence. Of starlight.

My breath comes uneven when I think of it. Your heart stopped, the precious quarks and blood cells
Ceased. The red fire turns grey. Were we ever stars, rushing through galactic lacunae? Pouring our life
Into the world, to watch it flow down mysterious paths, photon torpedoes of running and inaction.
Were we ever more than specks of snow, ice and light crystallized? Into something that believed
Itself to be a burning fire. Only ice within. Did my light ever reach you?

If I am a star, I feel the darkness pulling me. Phantom galaxies approach and I do not move away. If
I am ice, I feel the world emptied of your momentary refraction of light. Your bittersweet. You used
to stay up all hours of the night, growling at my treachery for never going to bed. My guardian, my
friend. And then it became a game, snarling at the shadows of raccoons and nameless things. All
meaning will be emptied. Every field of snow must melt. Each star a singularity transform.

I remember goading you into snow ball fights, pushing you onto sleds. You would
always fall.
And I would play again. But you could not be alone in the white, as though it would
swallow you whole.
Now, the night is much less brighter, the day little more than dew. Perhaps,
whatever
Molecule you’ve become, whatever weight you’ve ceased to make at least,
You will never fear the snow.