I go through your stories, the poems
about your daughter,
the noir entries that played off of
the wasted miles we knew
when we played
together in a band,
and it can’t be true, that you’re dead at a too-young 47.
I wrote you an email when I saw
the notice, thinking, hoping
that it was a prank
or a decoy maneuver done
in desperation to keep your
little girl at your side,
away from the mother
you no longer trusted,
the young female
who danced in a Tijuana club
for lucre before heading to some
small room upstairs
with the moment’s guest.
You never answered, and
now,
I know you’re really gone.
The autopsy report’s cold
epitaph: Hypertensive and Atherosclerotic
Cardiovascular disease; plaque building
up inside your worried heart as you
carted your two-year-old from station
to station, seeking
some clean solace from the blackened pits
of Zona Norte.
I have no one to talk to about you,
no friends in common close by;
I want to tell a girl you
used to know,
but I’m afraid
of what she’d say, turning it
into a diatribe
that would end up being
about her–this is
how bad it’s become:
there’s no one left to share
grief with, for fear
these hollow names will hiss and recede,
begrudging even the dead.
Grafictional 