Alone

The just-cut grass on the churchyard lawn,

invited us to linger, to talk about nothing.

So we sat in the sun while the cars drove by,

watching the birds pick through the clippings.

Lost in the day, we forgot about time,

then you got scared and without a word you ran, I didn't know why,

I didn't know what waited on you.

Why was your skin marked black and blue?

Your brother taught us important things,

Like how to steal squirtguns, shoved down the front of our pants.

A man with a badge grabbed you, so I ran.

We were seven years old.

Our moms paid the school for the overhead projector

that we broke when we fought in the fourth grade.

We were too young to know what we meant,

when we didn't talk for a month.

You were already gone,

when I thought to try.

We smelled each others shoes and you laughed,

when you smelled mine.

Years later, I smelled my own shoes, and smiled.  

But now, that memory fades,  I wish I could get it back.

They all loved you.

They wanted to be near you, to know you as I did,

and when they saw us together,

maybe they would think I was like you.

Now I see your face in stale-gray silhouette,

all the colors faded away.

You are barely a whisper now,

you haven't told me a secret these forty years.

It wasn't supposed to work out this way,

I wasn't meant to be alone.

On the day we buried you,

no shit, your mom turned and looked at me and she thought I was you, 

and she called me your name.  

She wanted me to come visit and sit in her kitchen chair like I used to.  

Like you used to.

A coward, I didn't go.

Years gone and now its just me,

and I wonder where you are.

I hope you are back in that churchyard, 

watching the birds picking over the clippings.