I can't help it.  I keep expecting to see you somewhere in the crowd.  I could swear that at any moment you'll surprise me, we'll embrace and you'll ask me what I have been up to for the last year. And you'll tell me about your latest project, or get rich quick scheme, and all of it in one sentence.  You'll have this new trick to show me or a hot new girlfriend to introduce me to.  You'll tell me about how your truck is running and how Shelly is doing in med school.  "What's the theme for Burning Man this year?  Have you talked to Rose?  Yeah, me neither."

And of course, you'll have a tale to tell much taller than the one you had last time. I'm never sure if they're true.  Like when you followed the dead across America for a year and smoked a joint with Jerry Garcia.  How you lost your tuition money at one poker game in Vegas, but was happy because the drinks were free. You never talked about the drugs. 

You never mentioned how the coke felt so right at the time, but cost you your daughter.  You never told me the tale of cold nights spent alone with the whiskey that kept you company and filled the emptiness in your home, in the backyard, and in your soul for a moment.  But you had it together when I met you with fistfuls of ginger beer and big league chew. 

I kissed your shoulder once.  You noticed and stared at me with a question on your mind that you never spoke aloud.  It was meant to be an expression of warmth, but your skin held an electricity that I didn't expect.  But with it you had a coolness that shrugged it off as an accident. You really had your shit together, on the surface.  I never would have guessed that your foundation was perilous and uneven.

You'd still be around if you truly had the world in your grasp, as you'd projected.  You wouldn't have bought the whiskey.  You wouldn't have bought the drugs.  You wouldn't have been found 3 days later safely nestled in your own rot amongst the blankets after so long sober. Wasn't it like 4 years or so?  I'm sure you could have told me the days.  You wouldn't have crushed every friend you'd ever made.  You wouldn't have broken my heart with your absence.  

With every death the light of life gets just a little dimmer.  Now I know why humans don't live for very long.  A person can't live in darkness alone.  The shit of it is that I can't put it down.  I have certainly tried.  If only I had known, had a clue, been less surprised.  You had such a love for life, it never occurred to me that the junkie doth protest too much.  But your toothy grin is definitely gone, all for the sake of one last hit.  And when I shrug off this world like an accident I know that I will see you somewhere in the crowd.