“Being with you and not being with you is
the only way I have to measure time.”
~ Jorge Luis Borges

In Memorial. Memoriam. Memorium.

~ for my Matthew, my murdered Mateo

on this day nine years ago

a song, a smell, the snippet of a memory

I still think about you every day. I wondered about that, wondered how the heated pain would ease or subside. It doesn’t.

a song lyric, like the one about that call that’ll bring you to your knees

I wear your deodorant every day, “something Gillette-y” we call it. Don buys it for me in bulk so I don’t run out. He fills my car with gas like that too. Because he loves me. (That could have gone either way, apparently, statistically.)

 

 

I wrote this about Matthew, the first post on my little undefined blog. I write the same words over and over pretty much every day.

REMEMBERING MATTHEW, WITH LOVE, ALWAYS

He was his mother’s son, never crossed a picket line, always rooted for the underdog. He worked at the Higher Path because he believed in the healing benefits of marijuana.

---

Matthew wrote this poem when he was nine.

I try to remember him at nine.

I miss him at every age.

But mostly I wonder about 36, or is it 37?

WHY NINE?

Gretzsky takes the puck.
He shoots.
I jump.
I forget about the dime in my mouth.
Down the hatch it goes.
Why nine?

I feel it in my throat.
It won’t come back up or got farther down.
I’m choking.
My dad asks me what happened.
I can’t talk so I find paper and a pencil.
I write, “I swallowed a dime.”
Why nine?

He jumps up.
It’s too late to push it out.
We get our shoes on as fast as we can.
We get in the car, no time to change.
I swallowed a dime, why nine?

We get to the hospital.
We run in.
My dad tells them what happened.
The doctor puts me to sleep.
When I awaken, I hear the good news.
I’m going to be okay.

I like being nine, but I can’t wait
until I’m twice as old.

~ Matthew Butcher, Age 9

 

---

“She got the call today
One out of the gray
And when the smoke cleared
It took her breath away
She said she didn’t believe
It could happen to me
I guess we’re all one phone call
From our knees”

~ Mat Kearney, Closer to Love