Brian

 Co-Vid but why? The nightmare of a year and a half gone, literally, I've lost count of days and stopped caring if I live or die. 

(To Brian, my high school sweetheart):

We were skipping school, smoking cigarettes, and on occasion joints. 

Our middle class homes on the edge of industry alienated by a petrochemical channel. 

(You brother's a redneck now; eating beef, BBQ, beer, fishing, wife beaters – he became one of them...

the ones who chased us into isolation, tried to run over you skating the 'spaghetti bowl' 

in their oversized truck.) 

Pot, skateboards, growing your hair out, hiding your face, 

your indifferent lanky body, pale skin, veins, the vines – 

we made out in the woods at the bowl, you got poison ivy on your ass.

 

Summers were morbid, sweaty – we cut off our jeans, barefoot and thirsty, concrete 20 degrees hotter. We met under a table at your brother's party, (the twins - we called you). 

A year later you went metal. 

It was easy for us, natural to love, to laugh, daring and – 

I sat on the floor in your room, you'd hand me Iron Maiden album covers, our first high. 

 

'Let's go downtown', you'd say, in some beat up old red 81 4-door model – 

your friend's name never mattered. Hanging our hands out the window, 

muggy and damp air, diesels roar past; weave through the back roads of a subdivision along 

the Beltway, the second loop around the city. 

 

A subdivision of streets with green signs named after trees. 

Brick and tan, 80's muted rust and tan. 

2 car garages, larger kitchens and bathrooms, 

high-waist jeans, owl glasses, color television, slim and sleek microwaves, 

boom boxes, cassette tapes, three way calling, coiled phone cords, 

Indiana Jones and INXS. National Geographic, Rubik Cube puzzles, Atari and Australian bands. 

Cable TV, Black Flag, Iron Maiden, red-hot, anthrax – 

You – 

you taught me the words to life - and then you took your own…

I will never know why.