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briarmoon · 4 years

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People with Names

Part of me wishes I had known her.

Authorities never apprehended the killer.

At age 10, I saw my first dead body. Her name was Marie.

She was like Laura Palmer. A prom queen and coke fiend.

My Dad was a homicide detective and I wasn’t

Supposed to see the Polaroid of this strangled co-ed.

At 13, I witnessed my best friend, Ren get molested

While I pretended to be asleep in the camp cot nearby.

We would never tell – swearing on each other’s lives.

Growing older, he would set dumpster fires

And steal Mom’s station wagon for joyrides.

At 33, I wrote and sent letters to Ren in jail,

Before he was released and committed suicide.

Remembering 25, I watched my red-headed roomie, Cee,

Commit victimless crimes against her bombshell body

Before becoming homeless and vanishing from site.

I would look for Cee whenever riding the T in Boston,

Dreaming of rescuing her from a pimp or Junky John, yet she

Was always looking to be lost rather than found.

At 39, I consoled my lifelong friend, Dee,

Whose eight-year-old son was taken from her

In the middle of an early December night.

Every year, we release hundreds of pink balloons

On J’s birthday into the March sky, as a reminder

That life is full of new hellos and never old goodbyes.

Approaching 40, I provided comfort for my close friend, Vee,

As she battled breast cancer. It took a couple of years

Until it consumed her body and Vee began to slowly disappear.

I kissed her the day before she finally withered away, my sweet violet.

Now at 43, I visit her grave often in the cemetery across the street;

We just honored Vee’s one-year passing by planting purple pansies.

Now my father fights for his life on a ventilator.

Sammy Boy, known in the community as a gentle family man;

Yet the same father who rips and shreds with his bare hands,

The dress shirt off brother Bertie Joe’s body

At age seven, because he wanted to wear a more colorful shirt

To Little Katie’s second-grade birthday party?

O’ Daddy, I don’t understand. Will your fairy son

Ever become a man of measure or of none?

We may never know as you have been silenced.

These people with names are just some of the reasons why

I have died a little over and over again on the inside

At different ages and times in my life. There are days where

My 43-year-old body feels more like my father’s age of 75.

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