by Sam Brodsky
Before I heard the news
I was sitting cross-legged on sapphire-blue
sheets, summer’s heat caked against the
windows like static hugging silk,
all too enthralled by some trashy show
with no way of knowing
that you were stolen away
with a single collision of
hard, groaning metal.
And when your motorcycle demolished
our family too, turned to scraps
too aware of how fragile we stood
against the brutality of the world.
We were buried with you.
I knew then how it felt to have
my insides yanked out of me and
maybe that’s how you felt when it all
happened to you, when your body no longer
belonged to you,
your gentle brown irises rid of their
jovial gleam that always thawed
through any negativity like
morning’s gentle light through thickened frost.
I wonder where you are now
wonder if you’re floating in an unspeakably
enchanting oblivion, your laugh echoing
wildly among the star-freckled sky.