crying over you and your plaid shirt/camo shorts summer fit
just as I did when the snack shack stopped selling pizza flavored Combos in ‘08.

inside of you were two blue jays and a skylight. a beak careening glass,
a pin dropped and mistaken for a whisper.

I have not seen you in a decade, but I still think of you as if I have.
as if there is a chlorine pool in every backyard I fall into.

everything here is a consequence: Papaw and Donald flipped the Chevy
at the bend and Donald split his skull in half on impact.

then I was never allowed to have a go-kart.

you were a flowering voice spoken into a landline phone,
a fragile wind snaking through the cowlick on my head.

then I went so long not being held by anyone but the thought of you.

I never finished leaving rings in the smalls of our backs
to remind us of how old we’ve become.

how can you be gone if I hear your laugh in every man’s voice
hollowing down every street.

I saw you today at the reception and you looked right through me.
but I still remember when we danced to whatever the poolside stereo gifted us.

when we didn’t know the names of anything around us, only ourselves.
it was us, man, two sets of hips shaking so delicately in an August sun,

as if there’d come no tomorrow. who else am I supposed to be without you?
what else could I be but a fruit stuffed in the split of bone you now call a jaw.