January 22nd: Dear Sarah

January 22^nd 2017

Dear Sarah

it will not be simple, it will not be long

it will take little time, it will take all your thought

it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath

it will be short, it will be simple

                                                                Adrienne Rich

                                                                Final Notations

Dear Sarah

                You left but came back a couple of times first the new baby you were seventeen and not married but today we don’t say what a shame we say do you have everything you  need and then on another day a year or two later and the baby walked in familiar and a little thin and so were you but you smiled the way you used to when you knew you’d cut through to getting good you were always good though I knew you didn’t believe that you had a new tattoo too often you found a way to cut yourself acceptable

                You never came back again but your boyfriend did and he was brief and breezy and thick as Sunday ham and knew too much about the wrong things a thug in a kid’s skin and we read a book to him about a boy-father who held his new baby alone because his girl had a stroke had her breath almost cut and it was like a prophet she/you eclampsia and a premature baby and you both lived through that but something something past passing passed left a brand in you a gully then a trench he’d knock you into and two years later another baby for both of you

                Now you ‘ll never come back not on your own two feet but I follow you up the stairs every day now I follow you out the classroom door and down the hall I call your name and it flits quick florescent and sparks still a firefly I think of now a firefly in the night I follow you and carry the news to you because maybe you don’t know that when you hanged yourself last weekend I was wondering Sarah I was wondering if I’d remember the name of the poet I heard read a poem in the late ‘90’s  about her son and finding him that same way and she couldn’t save him either and later all she had left of him was the scent of his jeans and these jeans are the only thing she can’t be without for years and years and years.

                Like for years after you left I never saw you and now I do I see you every day and I’d like to say I’m glad but I’m not because you’re not and you never will be again not in your this lifetime skin anyway I wish it could be otherwise  I wish you’d’ve come to see me before you went to your mother’s house I wish you’d’ve come and walked in the classroom again and again and let me let you empty out and hold out