All I Know

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.