Orange Bracelet

I thought about you yesterday,

Thought about how

You ought to be walking across the stage with me—

With me one state away,

But walking across none-the-less,

Smiling and laughing and thinking:

It’s finally over,

It’s finally our time...

Should have been our time,

Instead just mine.

I thought about that right before I

Closed my eyes to cry myself to sleep—

You would have been as happy as I wish that I could be,

But now...

I miss you and

I wish that we had a chance after saying those fateful words goodbye,

Had a chance to make them come true:

We’ll have to hang out more next year.

What biting

Last...

            I can’t help but think about you when

            I think about

            Graduation...

Biting last

            Words.

 

And I thought about you, too—

The one whose face I

            Barely knew,

The one who I promised I would

            Get to know

But never did.

I heard about you from my friends and I

Cried along with them

Over you,

Over the few minutes I had ever talked to you,

Over the million laughs we had shared without realizing it:

Brought together just when you were torn away in

The most

            Stinging way.

I can’t help but cry for the way you must have felt,

Lying and slowly melting

                                    Away—

Staring death in the face in the way that is only heard of in

                                                                                                            The classics we take to heart.

But you weren’t a classic—

Weren’t supposed to be—

You were

            Just a kid,

My age:

Doomed to be a sickening twist of

            Peter Pan.

 

I thought of you, too, last night—

The one I never knew,

Never met,

Never heard of,

Found out from the cries that my friends who knew you

                                                            Sent up:

An offering of black balloons and

It’s been a Hell of a ride...

But I never knew you and

Yet

I can’t help but miss you too.

 

The three of you...

The three that

Went ahead of us all—

I’m glad none of you are alone,

That all of you have two other hands to hold.

I thought of you three last night and

I think a word for you,

Every day...

Think with the orange bracelet around my wrist and

The memories that

                        We all lived through:

Max-life and live now for

You.