there's something to be said for the girl in skinny jeans
who can eat a pancake at 3 o'clock in the afternoon,
who listens to chopin on thursday nights
and moves around the house like a ghosting.
she calls herself a better swimmer than dancer,
even though she got caught in an undertoe
and gracefully pirouetted towards her death.

there's also something to be said for the man
who wears a jump suit and grew up loving hot wheels,
who licked the metal off cars he wanted to buy
just to mark his territory. he slammed into his death also,
though he knew all the angles. he couldn't predict this.

i can't relate to them much.
maybe because i myself am in mourning;
for the boy i lost on that beautiful summer day.
I found him behind the brambles near the bank
of a river

his breathing no longer musical
(stiff notes on brown sheets).
almost dipped into the earth, he resembled a kind of
mural, or decayed sponge or tribal clay figure
(the fact is he was trivial and small)

and after i had wiped the silt off his decades
and brushed the milk from his eyes,
it was then, it was then that i knew

it was my self i had lost.

(despair, you're a light rain.
you tap me on the shoulder and
you kiss my skin but you're not wanted.)