dead friends can stay

Every time I turn around to find you dead 
in the room, lolling about in unnatural attitudes
(but you always had one of those) (now it's 
plural), posed and stiffening at the table, or 
the desk, or the couch, or on the bed, I reflect

how I never saw your corpse. It tore my heart 
out. No one told me, I heard after the funeral. 
Your friends were never mine, and I guess 
they felt I had left the year before, and 
was uninterested or uninteresting. We 
always got along with your friends, 

but I must have not occurred. Now 
at random times, hi. You. I remember you 
so well, not like this but alive. Breathing, 
gathering strength for some charge. 

All charges fail, all causes crack, 
since you have died. I was not there 
to have your back. And it was not 
the kind of death my life so given 
could distract. So welcome friend.
You always were. Stay anywhere 
you wish or like. It's strange that 
you should haunt me now. 

But you were always strange. 

So's life.