Dave,
I won’t mourn you in the way that movies tell us to,
you were always so aware of cliché.
I have a few tears for you,
but mostly I have jokes,
most of them racy and off-color.We were learning how to face life together,
and most of what we’d figured out so far
involved laughter, irreverence and music.
We were learning how to be serious, too, though,
so it came as a surprise to me
that you left during tax season.
We shared ambitions so unreasonable
that we spoke of them in code,
and sometimes we were forced to scale them back.
We were supposed to finish piecing together–
you know, next week, when we both had time
–our theory of unconventional kindness.
I will remember you as you were,
that night when you tried to kiss that girl, at the Black Cat,
and failed,
wildly inappropriate, brilliant, searching.
Tariq
a friend from DC