The second place I tried to leave you was in the town you were named for - after the four hour drive with you in the backseat - the quietest you have ever been in any backseat - I was disappointed to find the city so shiny, so cheerful, so surface harmonious, so Social. I could not leave you someplace with high rises and without grit, I could not leave you someplace you were connected with only through your childish moniker - I could not leave you with busty blondes and fake accents, I could not leave you somewhere without a challenge.
So I took the ceramic vase back home, placed it back on the coffee table that was just milk crates and plywood, and tried not to see you every day.
The third place I tried to leave you was the former home of the late Princess Wilkes - the house you took us slowly past in his lover's car the day after you finally kissed my best friend, warning us dangerously of the ending that came with the way all three of us found love. You told us that day not to be careless, or reckless, or to let anyone see what we were holding inside of our chests - I could not leave you there either, in that corpse of a house with the ghost of the boy born in the wrong place at the wrong time - two wrongs can't possibly make a right resting place.
It was worse than the first place I thought of leaving you - more charred remains, I guess all I can think to say is ashes to ashes. The first place I tried to leave you was at the top of the hill where you sent your love for refuge. I stood there, looking at what was left of my week's sanctuary, remembering you and the window and the jacket - I would have left you there - spread you out over the burnt support beams and mixed you into the ashes of the pews, but I thought how much history this place must have had, how much sorrow and joy it must have seen before you ever set foot inside of it and found that I could not leave you in the company of all of those burned prayers.
Again, I took you home, reluctant to let you pass my doorway, and we spent weeks giving you a wide berth.
On the way home from the queerest castle, I paused at the streetlight where we watched you fall, outlined in scarlet and careless and reckless, and I considered for a second placing you there. Leaving you behind the way you did to us - asking my brother one night, drunk and serious, not to let them bury you - asking him to make sure you were burned. You took what wasn't exactly Eden, and sank it regardless to grief -
It was not until I moved to New York that I finally found the place to leave you - a holding tank for the only criminals I've ever seen harder than you - and the drain in the jail with holes just wide enough for your fine ashes - it seemed right to lay you to rest at the place where you learned how to be yourself.