Words to my dear friend


1.

running
as if you could 
          outrun time
as if the high
          gave you wings

running
because you 
          hated that you 
saw yourself 
          when i cried

2.

Cynical--that was you. You never could quite fit 
into what happy should mean--what you figured

it should mean (what someone had told you
it should mean)--& so you lay

in the road and waited for something to happen.
You were scared of what that meant, scared

that loneliness could follow you into the dark, that it
preys even when you can’t see your own

fraying hands in front of you. You never
wondered if maybe we were all just hurting

people, beaten & bruised, flattened, scraping ourselves
off the smoldering asfalt because we should

enjoy the sun (another thing 
that someone had once told you about living).

3. 

summers:
          burning in
                    each other's arms
is the way
          I like to remember it

          we always
seemed to forgive
                    each other but
never wanted to admit it

4. 

the other night
I dreamt you laying there, 
flat on the road.

get up
I had pleaded
as I clawed the river of blood

back into 
the crack in your skull.
i love you

When I woke 
the river was gone,
but I knew 

that the blood
was still running 
through my clasped fists.

5.

& the other day we hung a body by the edge 
of a river. It was one that we’d both walked
in & maybe even shared at one point. It had
found the good sense to die before we did
& so we strung it up like clothing to dry. You
thought it was us who killed it--for with death
comes rebirth-- but I wasn’t sure. 

6.

You 
          or maybe
I never meant you.