If we met up in the iced-over lot at the neighborhood’s edge
we were kids in—grid of low-slung ranches sunk
under the lengthening shadows of larch and pine,
each street slanted toward the state building where our folks
collected their checks on the first of each month—
and if your eyes were glossed with oxys and a week
without sleep, body a loose frame of copper piping propped
under your oversized coat, and we stood, face-to-face—
Michael, what would be left between us?
What would remain of tunneling under chainlink
after the Wilsinski house burned down, slipping
between the brick pallets and front-end loaders, looking
for something to claim? Or that July we worked stripping kudzu
and poison oak from your sideyard on the promise of a few bucks
from your dad, our longsleeves matted with pine pitch and sweat?
We found a yellowjacket nest, a paper lantern buried deep
in the brake. You dared me to hit it with a Wiffle ball bat
and I did and the yellowjackets stitched my chest and arms
with fire. I came back last Christmas and sat on the hard edge
of my little brother’s twin bed as he showed me how to thumb
an imaginary bullet into a handgun with REPLICA etched
on the barrel. Taught me words like breechblock
and chamber-throat. Blowback and primer. Showed me how
to switch off the safety, to keep my finger away from the trigger
until I’m ready to pull. The way your brother Daryl
took himself out of this world. I thought of you, thirteen,
weighing out nickels in your bedroom at your dad’s place.
Twisting a dutchie, licking it shut. You didn’t give a shit,
but I stuffed a paper towel tube with dryer sheets and we blew
our smoke through to hide the smell. All I have of you now
is rumor: a few run-ins with the cops for small stuff—
petty theft, possession—that you knocked up a girl
from Willimantic. That you were faded on cough syrup
and drifted into oncoming traffic on 84, limped away
with a sprained ankle but otherwise fine. There was a time
when I thought I knew what swerves us from disaster,
what separates us. All I can do now, Mike, is praise the state-
cut checks and the baggies of pills. Praise the quick transaction,
the no-look pass, twenty twisted into a palm. The Robitussin-
kiss, the slow drift of the wheel. The soft shoulder.