05.05.03 - 3:00 pm
requiem.

When I went home last week
they told me
that the neighbor boy,
a friend of my brother's
who would just wander into
our house without knocking,
and was always polite,
in his small,
brown haired, brown eyed way,

died.

A bone marrow transplant
gone wrong, my mother, said.
He was fifteen like my brother.

"I would have gone
to the funeral
but if John cried, then I
would too, and I didn't
want that,"
my sister
told me, solemn.

"I cried
like a ten year old girl,"
my brother said.

And so I went today
to the racks of cards arranged
in perfect rows
like stadium seating at the movies
in a shop in the mall
to find a preprinted sentiment
to express my sympathy
for a dollar-ninety-nine.

I lingered there
ran my hand over manufactured wishes
and found one that was
not too religious
but not too trivial either.
The perfect
way that I should feel.

"We feel lucky to have heard
the music,"
it read.
And I wondered
if his family felt lucky.

I didn't think so.

Ali the Anti-Cheerleader,
she died when I went away
to school;
I hadn't seen her
since graduation.
My mother never told me,
just handed me the yellowed clipped
obituary from the newspaper.
"Died of injuries from
a motorcycle accident,"
the paper read.

She wasn't the best
person, admittedly,
But I never get to say goodbye
to anyone who dies.
They always tell me
after the funeral.

I wanted to go
find her grave and tell her
how much I've grown since
she's been gone.
I wanted to tell her
about the boy I love while
sitting on the plush
grass beside her headstone.

I just want to get to say goodbye.


------------------------------

so, this is dedicated to the memories of Sam Kiener, 1987 - 2003, and Alison Feldman, 1983 - 2001. You are both missed.

.drink up baby, look at the stars. // .i'll kiss you again, between the bars.