I remember shiny lip gloss
And full lips
The first day I met you.
I thought that someone with such a pretty mouth
Would never be friends with someone like me.
But you took a photo of the two of us
On your Kodak digital camera.
Somehow, I was friends with
A girl with a beautiful mouth and pale eyes.

You used to tug the skin on your neck
While you cleared your throat.
Dad said it was a nervous habit.
What were you nervous about?

I decided you were in love with me
Because you stuttered
When we had a reading activity together
In fourth period.

I said I didn’t like you when I first met you,
Because I didn’t trust the way you moved your hands.
(Your fingers moved too gently and beautifully.)
But one day, when I had to play softball in P.E.,
I kept striking out.
You showed me, with your hands,
How to hold the bat.
Your hands guided mine and showed me what to do.
After that, how could I hate your hands?

We used to sit in the sun
on an old mattress behind the church house.
We talked about our families,
and about our Sunday school lessons.
Sometimes we told jokes our Sunday school teachers
would not have approved of.
But when our other friends found us,
I pretended that I never laughed at our jokes,
even though I had.

I decided I was in love with you
because you told me it was okay
that I struck out every time in baseball,
and because you didn't pick me last
when you were team captain.
But why was that all it took
for me to declare my love for a boy?

I had a favorite shirt
with pictures of cute dogs on it.
But you told me
that girls shouldn't wear shirts like that to church
because it wasn't pretty enough.
I never wore it to church again.

I never wore it again.

You took me to the very upstairs of the church,
and then even higher
to the bell tower,
where we pulled the rope and sounded the bell
after church was over. Then we ran away
and hid under the pews.
We must have been good hiders, because
we never got in trouble.

All I remember about you
is your first name
and that I laughed at you a lot.
But you were a little mean.
I didn't even think you were funny,
but I felt like I had to laugh.
Why did I feel like I had to laugh?

You were the only boy I knew,
so I figured we would probably have  to get married
and that was all I knew.
We used to hide in the bushes behind your house
And pretend we were married.

You are always younger, but
always still make me a little nervous.
Maybe it's your voice.
Maybe it's your face.
Maybe it's how you aren't afraid to talk to people,
but you never talk to me.

I'd known you for all five years of my life
when I learned we are cousins.
I envied the seven months of wisdom you had
more than me.
You had a dog I loved
and a stuffed cat that purred.
You saw the elephants in Chiang Mai
seven months before I did.

She is dead.
It’s fate’s fault.
But only sixteen.
That’s too young
To leave us.

He found it.
Her dead body,
Under the dock.
She’d been missing
For 45 minutes.

She was dead
Before anyone knew.
He never forgot
Finding her there,
Already far gone.

The ambulance came,
But too late.
No hope left
That she might
Still be okay.

It tore him.
Tore him apart.
You could see
The hurt inside
His circled eyes.

It started small
Just a sore,
On his cheek.
But it grew.
And it spread.

From one came
Another and another
Painful sores on
His deformed face,
Eating him away.

Then he left,
To find help.
Because it hurt
Far too much.
Even inside him..

He was gone
A long time.
We were hoping
He found whatever
Help he needed.

We finally heard.
A letter came.
But from him?
We didn’t know.
We couldn’t tell.

Scrawled in marker,
Were two words.
Our hearts stopped.
There it said
Only: “HELP
           JUDE”

He needs help?
Or found it?
We didn’t know.
Then we saw
Something more chilling.

A photograph slipped
From the envelope.
It was him.
But was it?
Didn’t look right.

His face, gone.
Rotted by sores.
Eaten all  away.
Hollow. Empty. Gone.
Then we knew.

In silent shame
Our eyes closed.
Because we knew
We should have
Helped him first.

We were the
Help he needed
Before he needed
Anything at all.
“We didn’t know.”

A bad excuse
Because we knew.
We always knew.

You always know.

Bedraggled. Empty. Worn and cast down.
Or cast out.
Never knowing
If the steps you're taking are before or behind you,
Though you furnish yourself with countless devices.

Trying in vain
To gather the scattered pieces
Of the many worlds you've left.
But the trail is ever behind you,
Reminding you.

The mountain range you're riding
Never seems to cease.
So many ups and downs
And just-around-the-corners
That continually come but never get you there.

You just want this to end;
To be done
Or run away.
You say there's no way,
And that nobody knows.
Even if they did, they wouldn't care or understand.

But dear, what you don't know,
Is that we've all been there before,
And everyone,
If they have a brain,
Can tell you

This too will pass.

I've been thinking...
                                wondering...
                                                    ­hoping...
But there is no hope left.
Once, I knew hope,
Like the friend who holds you up
But always falls asleep in the middle of your longest nights.
Those nights with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Yet, there is hope; this is the paradox.
There is hope, but what I need now is not.

Because,
As life works, the right things make themselves known at the wrong times,
And the wrong, destructive things make their way into the most beautiful times.

And now, I should be devoting my time to something worthwhile.
But, I sit, cross-legged on the floor,
My right earphone in my left ear because I need it that way.
I used to hear with both ears, as you do.
Not anymore.

I'm thinking about you.
Wondering and hoping things about you.
I tried to lay down everything for you,
But you didn't know it.
You don't know the sting this leaves in my heart when we talk long into the nights.
Nobody knows the ache I feel when they're all beaming.
I beam too, so that they don't know.
I need it this way.

Maybe I react too easily.
Maybe my heart is too tender.
Maybe, I say, but I know nothing.

Nothing but that this too shall pass.

Above all, there is still
                                       *Hope.