It took a hastily-made hangman puzzle
to **** you, a present-day friend
of mine to simply whisper
that three-letter word
as if she were restating the gospel.

Ironic, then, that as you were dying,
I felt an era-long noose loosening.

I remember finding skin pores
mistakenly labelled as sinkholes,
every confession warranting
a "believe me, we knew" after the other.

If you had spent any more time,
an indefinite amount of days
deciding to stay lurking
in the corners of the closet,
out there in the rafters
where no one could hear you
whispering poison into my gut reactions,
I might have sprouted
a kamikaze bloodline,
a raucous rhythm in the ranks
cackling louder with each year
of silence, each span of secrecy.

Although your plastic inflection
vanished with a collective
unlocking of the joints,
your cryptic sentiment still loiters
while my common sense is sleeping,
and I remember to repeat,
three times like Dorothy,
that moment I could only
be my true self on paper.