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Two Years
After You Committed Suicide
Your rooted family came
together and planted a river birch
down the lane by my mailbox—a
weeping monument.
When the wind
blows, branches tremble like time ticking.
Dimness must have set in for
brothers and sisters, but
when they reappear, they are
greeted by a kerchief
blazing like a
red sun hanging on a barren branch.
We don’t flinch,
but can’t outrun the years with you:
we unreel long-gone hippie days,
your hearty laugh, how you’d drink sunlight,
and we remember the way you could ripple
a conversation.
In shock,
we recall the long night of weeping
after you’d filled yourself with bullets—
first, from a medicine bottle and then,
from an innocent gun. We aren’t
strangers
to storms, but
now,
some carry a
fear for a child
that may one
day startle us by leaving,
shriveling
everything.
After You Committed Suicide
Your rooted family came
together and planted a river birch
down the lane by my mailbox—a
weeping monument.
When the wind
blows, branches tremble like time ticking.
Dimness must have set in for
brothers and sisters, but
when they reappear, they are
greeted by a kerchief
blazing like a
red sun hanging on a barren branch.
We don’t flinch,
but can’t outrun the years with you:
we unreel long-gone hippie days,
your hearty laugh, how you’d drink sunlight,
and we remember the way you could ripple
a conversation.
In shock,
we recall the long night of weeping
after you’d filled yourself with bullets—
first, from a medicine bottle and then,
from an innocent gun. We aren’t
strangers
to storms, but
now,
some carry a
fear for a child
that may one
day startle us by leaving,
shriveling
everything.
