Nat’l Po’ Month (and y’all know I’m po) 16: The Death List.

I'm still fucked up over someone has my drafts. It's really draining my want to write. Please know again, though I've said it a few times, that these are drafts, that after this month I intend to stack them up and scribble them to bits. Please also know I love pointers and suggestions if you have any lying around. Please also give back my drafts, mean old whoever :(

First to go: Mom's cat named Moses.
I was still swimming
through that age whose memories
only exist now in vibrant snapshots.
I can still see him leaping out of the tall grass
where I'd been searching, over my
low head and I fell down BAM and when I looked
over my tiny shoulder, he'd disappeared.
He was already dead at the time.

Then the blonde boy in my sixth grade class
I never really knew but always thought was
"cool." He did it to himself in our
seventh grade year. Girls who hadn't even
known him wailed for weeks.

A family friend: Lu Nedro. Ninety-six year old
Roman candle with the fiery mop to testify.
Caught pneumonia and was gone before a
fortnight passed. The viewing was stuffy, not
at all the type of thing I thought would please her
and I refused to look in the casket. I've managed
to forget the funeral but remember palming a
golden buddha incense burner from her
summer-sun kitchen.

My father's oldest brother when I was a junior.
My father's mother: I was still a junior. My
father survived them both, but not entirely.
My father became a different man.

Seniors graduate and immediately go camping
to celebrate, laughing lots and sleeping little.
Aaron, I imagine, was exhausted: he'd been
our host. He crossed the median. I wasn't
there but can still hear the crash.

I never heard how Nikki went. Her mother
found my address in a notebook and sent me
two programs from her funeral. It was months
after the fact and knowing I'd missed it
killed me, as they say.

In fifth grade, a boy named Xander Smith
asked me why I was already Jeremy's
girlfriend. I said because he'd asked me &
He cried I couldn't because my name
was written on his dental floss. We both
grew up to be gay. I was in Scotland when
his car went off the old Memphis bridge,
was sent a link to a memorial website.
I still won't accept it. His picture tore right
through my belly in a slide show at a
driving safety class. Left it and saw
his published book of poems at a coffee
shop and heard him say, "Just take it,
you know I'd give you one myself."