Janne Robinson

“I walked through the cemetery holding a bouquet of yellow and red flowers with brown combat boots, feeling grateful and bitter the sun was shining so brightly.

I felt an urge to run, as well as a magnet to reach the group of people surrounding you.

I wanted to be wearing white.

I wanted to be walking down an isle with flowers and for this to be a different ceremony.

I wanted to curl up beside the earth that held you, the pink and yellow petals, strings of ground hanging loosely in the wind and be beside you.

I was angry you were buried, I resented the earth falling upon you. Each scoop felt heavy and indefinite.
I'm not ready to know this is definite.

I watched your chest, in a white linen shirt last night wishing for your chest to rise.

But when I kissed your forehead it was cold. And when I held your hands it wasn't you. It was a shell. It was a vessel. It was empty.

The first time I heard your new music it was by accident and your voice drove me from your home into hysterics. But when I entered your home and it played with your casket it was welcome.

I read your letter with your mom and dad out loud beside you, and halfway through "spelunking in your soul" started to play.

That was a gift, thank you.
Today walking back from the funeral a green and black beetle landed in my hair and crawled onto my finger. I just had a bad moment with a woman in your life and I felt you in the little beetle.

I'm writing something to be read at your celebration of life. It's not going to be read by me. I have a wedding in Joshua tree. But I will celebrate you in the desert there.
I wanted to read the poem "sex and wine for breakfast" I wrote about you but figured I would go less steamy.

I love you.”
― Janne Robinson