The sweat drips down my red face as I focus on my heart rate
and look in a mirror that shows me how high I can kick,
but I need to 'be more intense.'
I think of her kissing your neck,
much better at it than me,
nibbling your ear,
much better at it than me,
she is much more confident
because she was plenty of first kisses,
and god, I wish I was yours.
I think of her clear face and the way that you still hang out
and the way she cheated on you
and the way she sometimes says hi to me in the hallway,
which makes me want to put my hand around her throat and say,
"I am so glad you lost the best thing that happened to me."
I think of this to make my pointed toes have a purpose
to make me dance with anger
but even after the song is over,
I can't stop
thinking.

he recites the speed of light one saturday morning, when the air between us was too dark. like somehow that would make it better, like that would alleviate whatever tension we were building.

he is someone new, a present with a torn wrapper. that little glance is always the most intriguing.

we're both somewhere we shouldn't be, saying things we shouldn't say and touching what we shouldn't touch. but it isn't stopping anyone.

i don’t know if you were in second
or third grade. or what your favorite color was.
i’m not sure if you liked playing dress up or soccer
or if you were an only child or the baby of six.
i don’t who you had a crush on and i’m not even sure of your gender
but what i do know, is that today you were scared because you saw white
and then heard the noise of the explosion, and the screams of the injured
but i’m not sure if had learned yet in school that light travels faster than sound.
i don’t know why you were watching the marathon, but i know that you were excited
and impressed
that all these people were running for twenty-six miles, which happens
to be the distance from your house to your
grandma’s.
i don’t know if you died squeezing tightly to your mother’s hand or
if your last breath was taken alone, while hundreds ran in a flurry around you.
i do know that when you fell to the ground, no longer breathing,
you tripped a wire that pulled out
your father’s heart and sanity.
i know that you hadn’t yet felt someone
trace their lips up the divot of your spine
and i know that you will never get to sneak out of the house at
three am to get drunk in a park.
you will never see the next president or even what your best friend will wear
on his wedding day.
and i am sorry.
i am sorry that someone was sick enough to put
an explosive in the trashcan and let it detonate
i’m sorry that your death was the product of human selfishness and greed.
i am sorry that today you had to feel a warm liquid leak from your body
and that you lost so much of it you
couldn’t bear to keep your eyes open.
i’m sorry that you were eight years old when you died,
and that you barely got a taste of the world before it was snatched out from under you.