After My Immortal Poem by Dennis Ryan

Tuesday night, January 10, 2023; Wednesday morning, March 15,2023

"I tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone..."
—Evanescence, "My Immortal", You Tube Music Video

It's always been about replacement.
I know that now—taking the place of
that old loss, aussaging it, that lost-
as-yet-ever-present regret that meant
so much, but could not be replaced,
that old wound wounded yet again
that began to fester long before Karen
though she proved but one more symptom,
sign, trial, test, instance, outcome, part
and parcel of my replacement drama
that goes on and on as I speak. "My Immortal"—
that look in the woman's eyes as she sings
in that You Tube music video, the ascending
pitch in her voice as it rises to crescendo
in "I tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone..."
Nothing has worked, yet there remains
a possibility, yes, you are, and somewhere
out there you are... waiting for me? Absurd
possibility—my mind's tendency to think in terms
of potential and possibility—kanoosei ga aru—
may prove to be of help, to make such thinking—
well, it happens in cartoons and in the movies,
the cartoon art of Roy Lichtenstein, not 'Drowning Girl',
but—and one never discredits Life's little opportunities,
the comic, comical, the improbable, the magical, Disney—
because some of that magic can be, is so real. Yes, is—
I am, real, and the question remains the same as before,
Gordon L: Can anyone see me for me and act accordingly?