Peter DiRienzo, You Are My Christmas Ghost

And one night of the year, I go home from my parents, driving home alone like I did that night I didn't go out with you to the show but I should of, maybe you wouldn't have danced so hard if I had been there to drag you to the side but I try not to think about it that way, and I may have avoided thinking about you all night but then I check my email just like I did that night, in my apartment by myself, and I miss driving around Boston Mills with you shining lights out the window into the woods to see the deer eyes, or sitting at Denny's late, or drinking bad beer with you in some asshole punk's apartment, who hasn't even got real furniture, only mattresses on the floor and cigarette butts in the toilet. How many years was it? 7 or 8? You and me always, everywhere together. Your face showing up in the back window of my parents house, all grim and white with that ridiculous leather jacket you had painted heads on sticks on the back of, to pick me up and sit at the coffeeshop for hours. Watching you drink scotch. But I remember when you got me this album, when I left for Kent, and I remember the shows we went to at the old Grog shop, and I remember going to Edison's with you drinking Celebrator just to collect all the little white horses, and I've replaced you with a string of other best friend guys, but nobody is you, with your weird loping walk and crazed smile and weird Italian nose, you stupid ugly ginger, you're the original the one who gave me expectations, the one who took me on drives to nowhere first, all driving belongs to you in the end. And I hope, because you know I don't believe in praying or afterlife or you anymore, that maybe there's a time shift somewhere, a hole in the universe, and all the way back in time when we were partners, you feel this somehow, how much I loved you years and years later. Maybe that's why you were such a good friend to me then, because you knew I'd think this way once you were gone. So I'm just putting this electric signals out there, frankly, what else would you have me do? It hurts to think of your name buried under snow somewhere, but I can't clean it off. I'm okay. It's okay to give you one night, like a Saint's Feast, the Feast of St. Peter. You would have hated Facebook so much, you would have made so much fun of me, which is totally valid, but I just looked up your son to see, and he looks just like you. And now I'm going to watch this video of people getting puppies for Christmas like ten million times.