Minneapolis, L.A. I’d be at brunch in Colorado

when you’d call to say the show had just ended

after three encores that unraveled the axis

of Earth. I remember the sound of your sweat

through the phone on the fifty-sixth morning

you spent dancing to the dreams of a man who learned

to play twenty-seven instruments on his own.

The first birthday present I ever gave you

was a skateboard I’d painted with the sheet music

to Purple Rain. I didn’t yet know true Prince fans

don’t listen to Purple Rain. They listen to the silence

outside of vaults of unreleased songs—believing

the songs could save their lives and swearing

they’d rather die than press their ears to a single chorus

without his permission. Respect, I learned, was the first rule

to loving someone who would erase his own name

so it couldn’t be sold. You said when you were near him

you wouldn’t look at him too long. Taught your eyes

to hang back. Gave him more space than the moon.

Which is to say—he was your gravity.

He was much of the world’s gravity.

He kept people here.

I don’t remember why we couldn’t get seats

together on the plane, but I do know I was exactly

sixteen rows behind you when the wheels touched

the ground, when we pulled up to the gate,

when the pilot’s voice came over the speaker:

Folks, we’ve just received word

that Prince has died—

I’d crawled over the seat in front of me.

I was crawling over the next. I was almost fourteen

rows away when a mob of passengers, screaming

they were late for their destinations too, refused

to let me pass. I’d never in my life been so far away

from anywhere I needed to be.

When I found you in the terminal,

it was his pain, not yours, rushing from your eyes.

The thing about loving a stranger is you can guess,

but can never be sure, what they are privately surviving

on their journey to help others survive. I’m just so grateful

for him, you kept saying. I’m just so grateful for him. Mascara

running lines down your cheeks like he’d come back

to wipe your tears and left his guitar strings behind.

I was scheduled to go directly from the airport

to meet a friend who was grieving the death

of her mother. There was no way you would have let me

stay with you, but a whole universe exists in the moments

I spent weighing what to do, and I still visit

that universe on days I give up

on being an artist—

I go back to your bedroom in 2006 where you are

laying every album he ever made on the carpet.

Each record is a blueprint of you. In the corner now

is a man half-angel in skyscraper shoes. I watch him

watch you flip his vinyl to the B-side and drop the needle

into the groove. I watch him watch you watch my face