For Chris

I miss your calls on the weekend

full of medical details

and updates on your beloved granddaughter

I miss your spontaneous visits

driving five hours from King’s Beach

to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday

or just to watch an old black-and-white movie

I miss the bottle of wine 

that loosened memories,

our shared histories, exaggerated

for their comic relief and ability to heal

I miss the idle hours together

fantasizing a compound where 
as crazy old women

we’d sit in a garden 
tended by young men and women

in daffodil yellow and cornflower blue

I miss your anger at injustice

your unrelenting introspection

your blind faith in a higher power

I miss knowing that a visit

was just a phone call away