Hello, It’s Me

for Missy

You can’t know “the essence of Todd,” you said,
listening only to “Hello, It’s Me” as a boy
on a plastic Radio Shack phonograph
(I called it my Plastic Ono Record Player)
or Adventures in Utopia on the super audiophile
teenage sound system with the diamond
needles I would steal from stereo store demo
turntables. I used to think if only I could
polish and perfect the skinny rock star
stringy-hair look – Todd Rundgren’s slack
effect, smoking eloquent cigarettes instead of
eating, rising quickly from the couch and stubbing
out the butts when new songs came to his head –
we finally would’ve been perfect together.
Where you come from sounds clichéd until
you live through it. The morning after you’re gone,
I’m remembering the last time I saw you, lunch
at Aida’s Deli, frank talk of reconstructive surgeries,
a punch line about how they were the best thing
to come from being sick. Both of us ordered
Greek salads, both still in our bodies, hungry.