for Chester Bennington
All I know
is that I seem to love you.
I watch you flicker
across the television screen—
your face, luminous, beautiful,
unreachable—
and something pulls low in my body,
a terrible warmth,
tender.
You make something in me ache
that has no name.
I want to be your mother—
to gather you in,
to press your head
against the hollow of my chest,
to quiet whatever hurt
raged inside you.
Your voice tears through me,
raw, insistent—
it does not ask permission.
I imagine you stepping forward,
out of the screen,
into my arms.
I would have held you.
I would have kissed you softly.
But you are gone.
And I am left here,
aching toward nothing.
But still,
I have a gift.
The sound of your voice
filling the hollow that is me.