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
Jennifer was my friend of fifteen years and a fellow poet. Dreamt of her yesterday-- like she was actually here.