Dorian told me
this only a couple hours
ago…
Said that Ian had worked
at Pizza House up until the end.
Didn’t know he was even
back in Ann Arbor…
Briefly knew that Dear Friend.
And as it turns out,
he didn’t survive me…
though he once revived me;
he is cold in the ground.
Only yesterday I thought
I’d write…
only not…
& now to then learn
he’s not even around.
Autumn once told me
she’d written him off…
not worth the cost…
far beyond saving.
He couldn’t stop it…
He couldn’t drop it…
farewells & goodbyes;
all he ever was saying.
Can’t stand the silence.
Can’t stand the staring.
Cure sang he’s NUMB –
No cure for his fun –
Did not really know him
though I never stopped caring.
Written By Jason Wright
December 31, 2001
For Ian
Explained:
Ian was a friend of friends. He was goth, and he had wild black hair that reminded me of Robert Smith of The Cure. He and Autumn visited me at Meijer when I worked there (between 1996 & 1999) and they picked me up to take me to a gallery where Autumn was having an exhibit while the museum was closed. He spoke with me about The Cure’s then new album, “Wild Mood Swings” (released: May 7, 1996) and later, after chilling at the Fleetwood he gave me a kiss goodnight at my car, despite me having a boyfriend in Florida. It was invigorating. My friend Paul had told me all about a guy he was hung up on named Ian but I didn’t make the connection. When I realized our Ians were one and the same, well, I stayed away. But I always liked him.
Ian was an addict. Heroin. Or so I was told. I’m sure it was true as all his old friends seemed to hate him based on his addiction and whatever shit he spewed on them as a result. He moved away. When I wrote my first poem about him I meant to send it to him but the people I asked had all come to despise him and weren’t interested in helping me find him. Later he returned to Michigan, and was actually working in a restaurant that I frequented (which itself was rare), but I never saw him there. He worked with people I knew, but they didn’t know that I knew him. And one night, my friend Carrie got in a fight with him and he left early, and he overdosed. And he died. And he was buried. And I found out maybe a week after all that from Dorian, who was a guy that I made out with once, who was a drug dealer, I think, and he and I would randomly cross paths now and again around Ypsi / Ann Arbor. When I asked my friend Carrie about it and explained that I had cared about him, she didn’t apologize or show any remorse or even the slightest bit of sympathy for me, and this hurt our friendship.
But to have written about him originally as someone who reminded me of people that I’d met in a hospital that I mostly outlived and that I found it comforting that he would survive, and then have him die, was very jarring. And it’s even more so now looking back at all this in 2026, over 25 years later.
And it is impossible for me to think of Ian and not think of “Numb” by The Cure from “Wild Mood Swings” – or hear the song and not remember Ian.
Jason: 05-08-26
