"maybe like 35-40 min!"

We could dance around this tabletop all night but you're afraid of the inevitable and I'm afraid of the words your eyes forget to say. There's a life outside this school hallway but I've forgotten it for the moment because you look so. damn. good today. I'm tracing your footsteps with my senses but I don't think I'll ever capture on film the gloss in your wake.

It makes me wish everyone were around to experience the first night I had you alone. You sang without a care, at the piano you've never known how to play. The laughter covered the lyrics in the sweetest disguise and I've been searching for your song hoping I'm only deaf in denial.
That. red. shirt. Can you even see my knees shaking? Is that a mere illusion my brain has punished me with because I still don't know how to ask you to come to the game?


I'm crossing the border and you're anxiously telling me all the things I'll need to know to get me through the week but I'll be back in ten minutes because you get me through the week.

and my mother will tell me I'm spending too much time on an electronic device but she's wrong. Because it's not the screen I'm attached to it's the other end. It's the voice that comes through this miracle technology has given me. I think when we were angels in heaven I begged to live when I would never have to go long without seeing you. And God clearly listened because he knew you were too good to be under appreciated.

I'm afraid I've crossed the border for too long and you've fallen asleep at the wheel. I'm afraid the miracle in my hand is only good for when you agree there's too much distance. I'm afraid there's a fork in the road and we took it separate days. I'm afraid two roads diverged and they won't cross again soon.

You left the hallway a glorified memory, I'm afraid that's all you'll ever do for me.

To Sarah Brown. (I always thought you had the softest brown hair.)

I never understood the life you were living. I was just a kid and you were just a troubled rebel who always smelled wrong. I wasn't allowed in your room because you were angry and would probably swear at me. But now I've realized

 you      lost      it       all.

All the marbles lined up and in one straight shot God said you were going to lose. 

He took the love and the understanding and the communication straight out of your home and left you with half of a half of a mother. She did you no wrong but she never could quite do you right and you still had to live to see tomorrow. I thought you chose to be the all-black stand away but you were begging to be the all-surrounded cured.

I thought the fights were crude and pointless and you were defiance in action against a cause, but you were struggling along the train tracks with a rope and a gun and you were plotting the best way to drown. 

You had it leap from your heart to the cold basement that you knew life wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. Why did your father have to go when your mother was barely high functioning? Why did the Destiny's Child CD and the American Girl Dolls turn from a childhood to a bitter pile in the corner of a pink room that is far too ready for a happy girl to come home with a happy smile to happy parents with happy problems.

 Nothing about the current you were caught in seemed happy, and I thought you chose that. I'm sorry I never held your hand or told you how much it meant that you let me use your endless CD's. I'm sorry I sat on the concrete floor and played with your ferrets alone and ran quickly upstairs when you came out of your room.

I was just a kid. I didn't know.