Patti Smith
Beneath the Southern Cross, 1996
My first boyfriend passed away yesterday. The news came in like a digital wave on social media and the memory of our time together slowly brushes against my memory like sea foam in the breeze. I remember standing under the dark starry skies of new mexico one autumn nite as we clumsily read each other for any signs of longing. That excitement and ambivalence of physical and psychic attraction to another queer person in 2001 doesn’t quite exist anymore. Then the spring break during my freshman year I drive back to gallup, new mexico and come out to my parents because I want to get back to celebrate our anniversary. In retrospect it seems silly but we were a union at one point. Our bodies shared a bed. One year we drove to albuquerque for gathering of nations and are forced to sleep at a shady motel on a seedy part of the old route 66. We feared the entire nite for our safety but we made it out alive. And all I can hear is isaac brock repeating “it’s hard to remember” as i see the new mexican desert force itself against my skin and the road leads to his door one evening when his mother isn’t home. Then suddenly we are two strangers who have memorized the length of one another’s body or the shape of our mutual laughter. The last time I saw him he welcomed me into his house and everything familiar came back in the warmth of his character. Except we weren’t children and we weren’t obligated by unrealistic and teenage expectations.
I know I couldn’t have kept you from jumping off that bridge that rises over the spokane river but I hope you know how loved you are and how many lives you’ve touched in spite of what it is you felt that you had to do. You are a braver soul than anyone could imagine and you will always be in my heart.
Rest in power, Daniel. XO
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