Where did you go?
With flaxen hair, all whirling and twirling
You escaped through meteor showers
And we got tangled in afterlife moon rocks

We lie in familiar basements and discuss
An ink on skin memorial for the best friend you gifted us
An eternal mother's day playing to the sound of
Loose change in my pockets

Still, no one cares to ask if Rachel can breathe
We continue through the motions
Sailing over your hometown on glass shard boats
The ice is getting thinner

And I must wonder if we will all erupt into
An overflow of you
Or sink into the sludge
Not quite knowing what to do

We keep faith in sure hands
The secrets lying at the bottom of the bottle
Cigarettes on the overpass
The promise of August and Everything After -

A freelance writer with knotted blonde hair, coming through in stereo

You thought you'd see her around
Not everyday, but fairly often
And no one quite knew how to take it,
When a new boy took your place up on the mountain

Remember those endless days you spent
Frolicking through fields and licking cement
Spelling out each others names in twigs
And stitching your bones together with gold thread

Now she's got everything she needs
A blonde boy from the state park
Who lives in a barrel of beer beneath the southwestern rapids
And a home made from the backseat of her secondhand car

You have sternum pains and you know far too much
You used to wear your hair long to keep those mountain secrets  
These days it grows to hide the footprint left below your bottom lip

Some bonds lie strictly in memory
And
She knows she's been on your mind

On the drive home -
I barreled down a
Familiar highway
Numbered - 43.
******* that old
Catholic school
Coffee through a
Bright orange straw,
Down a melancholy
Throat, I accidentally
Witnessed summer
Collapse in on itself.

The very last
Glimmer of June
Covered by a
Cumulus cloud.

July waved in
My rearview mirror,
And I swear,
I almost cried.

August started
Shaking, hard,
And cracking
It's gum.

I saw the world as it was,
And then suddenly,
With no prior warning,
How it was not.
I watched as the things I knew
(Or thought I knew)
Crumbled to ice blue dust.

I drove through
Your hometown.
Past your parent's
House, the gas station
Where they called you
All those pretty little
Names you'd prefer
Never to be called,
The table we mourned
At after the polar vortex.

See, it's been almost
A year now. Since we all
Rolled down the hill
Into tiny, wooden caskets.
Since you bought a
Hairbrush to untangle
The knots in our
Best friend's chest.
Since none of us knew
What to do, but drink
Coffee and make promises.
Since we had to grow
Older, and smoke
Cigarettes on the overpass
To ease ten shaking
Shoulders.

You dropped the garage door on your knees
At the teen party that summer
And you bled some fantastic blood onto the sidewalk
With a cigarette in hand and a lighter in your mouth

We would roll around, naked, on the trailer bed sheets.
You may recall, it was reckless as ****.
And how you almost stabbed yourself with epi on a whim
While we barreled down the highway, fifths of gin residing beneath the seats.

I wasn't the only one who had words to say about the dagger on your bedside table
Or your self made haircut all untamed and screaming

I was tied to your ribcage with fishing wire
The same day you hid all the knives.
See, I'm still here beneath the string light ribbon tree, and these days, Rachel's washing her face with wine

You're slow dancing at the state park,
With river guides and alibis.
At least now no one cries

You can bleach your hair
Or cut it off with a butcher knife
All of this done by candle light,
In the middle of the night

Get him just drunk enough
On perfume liquors in the backyard
And whisper little things about
The parts of you made of glass

Trace his name across
Your open veins in vibrant reds
Mailing him dim lit photos
Of  scar tissue evidence

Crash your car into the drive-in movie screen
Think about how things could have been
If you never let it slip
That you dreamt of his top lip

It's when we're all apart
That I begin to lose control of my body
Swallowing lemon juice by the jersey shore -
Things have been worse

Mostly, I long for that physical closeness
To hold a jaw in my hands, careful not to shatter it

And don't get me wrong -
I've seen photographs of myself
The way I live with my shoulders pinned to my ears
As to block out the irreparable chatter of finites and hydrangeas
Like the world has never seen your hair peak through closet dirt

Rachel bleached her hair to
Mark the end of something silver -

To counteract the epitaph

An eternal "I was here, and I didn't want to leave"

It all washed up on shore, dead
The same summer most of us
Gave up on God and gave into one another
Or those saints found below the belt

Death is not the color black
It's water growing gradually stagnant, yellow
A slow crawl on all fours to the finish line or a sunset swallow
The faded leather found sourrounding your veracious belt loop

And then there's Elizabeth
Storming down the church aisle to call the whole order off
She'd return to the dive bars in red lipstick
And break hearts through notes written in checkbooks

Cosmic chaos comforts
The living in regard to the dead
We have faith in stardust and song lyrics
A road map, phone number sent through the telescope at a camp sight

But caskets close and
Bodies burn
They scatter on hilltops and
Scream out in stereo

Sleepless slumbers remain
For Rachel and this is her
Peroxide obituary
For a mother gone too soon