A radioactive mountain range
A strange arrange that had you estranged
An isolating landscape expanding across your body
Did you no favors, made your body gaudy and soddy
Exclusivity dawned by white cotton gloves
Like two handheld doves, but a barrier to love
Stay away from her, who knows if it’s contagious
To spend time with her my lord it’s outrageous
We sat together in third grade how could I betray
My feelings
You were so kind and I liked you. But that feeling couldn’t stay
Years later in high school we reconnected
When I asked how you were, you said infected
To the transplant of bone marrow
Your body’s mind was too narrow
Rejected, neglected subjected
To all kinds of shit
But was I describing your classmates
Or the horrible disease
We could be at Stony Brook together today
Instead I remember seeing the kids
Trying to keep fake tears at bay
Because after the night in the hospital
And in your room
After getting your high school degree early
And the first in your family so congratulations, surly
After the grad party at your house
With a chocolate fountain I remember you were proud to announce
Your body mind and heart gave up
But the kids, to the funeral alone they showed up
They’d missed a decade of you
maybe two
Then they hugged me 10 feet from your coffin
Man I wished that I saw you more often
Regret, and I fret
Because the decade I missed I will never forget
Nicely written but hurts to read.
I've only said about three words to Leslie, I remember her so clearly. She was sweet to me when I was in third grade and you were in class together. It felt good that she, as a fifth grader, would speak to me even when I was so low in the non existent but very real at the time "elementary school social pyramid" - this, of course, being well before my troublesome phase of disregard for any form of hierarchy.
I am sorry for your loss. She lives on.