dimmed cool

My cousin, Mercury, could make lines dance and bend with his hand and a pen. Architecture he wanted to do at U. He hadn't planned on us burying him in the spring of his sixteenth year. What youth plans to be buried by their family? Our most gifted scion now grows to eternal lines in time. Shattered and red-eyed, we stared far off and away and wondered what we were doing the moment before we stood still. Beautiful, bright and fast, he pulled two thousand to the temple for a quiet, sad goodbye while not even breathing. Death looks like sleep on youth, odd and unpeaceful.
He had sat on my lap and heard outlandish tales. He stood poised and smiling at the door of my room when I taught at his school. He showed me his earring first, beaming. He cheered my tale on never giving up. He won at art and wrestling and girlfriends. Maybe he's still winning. Maybe he lost the only endeavor that ever matters. Either way, planet Earth is dimmed by the loss.
Sometimes we would just sit in the truck and eat the banana splits where we stopped. It was usually the three of us, Mercury, his brother and me. Sometimes Bacchus and Apollo were there. Sometimes we'd walk down railroad tracks and just laugh because Earth is beautiful and we were full of life. We stopped and photographed at trains. We sledded down empty, snow covered streets and listened to radiohead, the cure, cake. We fished on red clay banks. We all went to the beach the summer before that spring. Pure, crazy fun for a mess of rednecks with nothing much to lose.
Mercury whispered to me a few nights after the burial. He hasn't said anything since.
It only takes a moment to die.
"yet all experience is an arch
where through gleams that untraveled world
whose margin fades,
forever when we move."
Can you forget your muscles? Can you forget your poverty? Can you forget the thirty-eight cents shortchanged? Can you forget your best victory and brightest brilliance? Can you forget your beautiful imperfection? Did you prove your love this morning? Nothing in this world is more important, more relevant, more cool than your LOVE.