Even with all this air in the world
Its still hard to breathe

Drifting off in mid-day
She is there in my parent's house
Where she should not be
She's never met them
been inside their home

...and besides
She's dead...

Don't know where I drop my brains off
or my heart
when sleeping
I so clearly know this
but I dismiss it
for the moment--
go along with joy
to have her with me once again

She looks so well!
Her pale skin flushed
below her ragged, reddish hair
Wearing peacock blue sateen
as always
dressed to ****
to go somewhere
anywhere
away
from loneliness
from cancer

...and she had included me
on her glorious outing
without title
without honor
I had been her teacher-friend
like an elder wedding guest
she had grown
beyond ...

She helps me dump my canvas bag of poems
on my parent's bed
Where I conceived them
or they conceived me

“What about this one?
Or this is a good one too!
I know you can do this!
You read so well!”
she says
I'm thinking, “This is not like Jenn,
so reversed
for her to give a thought...
and besides, it is not even my event!"

Now she's in my mother's place
in her 1950's closet
pushing hangers across the rail
She would find it--
something
I could wear

I am so transported by the smell
of memories
that I don't care
mothballs, lavender, perfume
I get distracted deep within
almost losing track in the euphoria
to have found my friend again
I lose a moment in the soft fur of mom's mink
clipped together mouth to tail
to form the stole
an ouroboros
With its beady eyes
on me
like death
would drape across my shoulders
given half a chance

When from its mouth of glamorous lies....
Jenn shoves me through life's opened door
She has found that dress!
I wore...

the one with hope, and future's
purple flowers
dropped waist and scalloped neck
Yes, It would do, “Yes!"

But now,
she makes excuse to leave
...of meeting Joe
...of going on ahead...

I know
she must

as this is all some clabbered past
a gift of dreams
Still, I want to hug her
just one last....

but she feels empty...

In embrace
she turns to ash