Too late

I cried as I saw the boy's photos.

I saw him with a goofy grin. I saw his pictures from the night he won the bhangra contest.
I saw him with ten different bottles of beer, whiskey and soda. Molson's, Blue Label and Cola. Never in a drunken stupor.

I saw him at Indian formals. 15 different silk ties.
I saw his eyes were wide set, large and thickly fringed. That they always laughed. I saw he went to the mandir each weekend. I saw he believed in one god.

I saw him with his iphone. Vacationing through the Caribbean. Posing in his track pants and grey boxers with a bare chest.
I saw him with his bike. That he died on.

I saw his blood on the asphalt. His motorcycle under the '97 chevy. The yellow tape. His 700 friends who mourned.

We'd never met. Now we never could.

I felt his cologne when he stood in his jeans freshly showered. I heard their laughs when someone had clicked as the boys hoisted him up on their shoulders. I felt the girls' heartbeats rise as he danced wearing his silk tie. I felt the sun's glare as he squinted and his face looked softly kind. I felt the crisp morning he stood outside his law school.

That was you. That was Him too.

I cried over the photos I'd never see.
I cried for the stranger I could never befriend.
I cried because it wasn't part of the plan.
I cried for the friendships it broke.

I cried.
Because you couldn't.

Gone

Whenever the house of cards collapses there is time to write.

To fill the air with words where rooms with neatly laid desires lay in bed sleeping contently for the morning would soon come to awaken them.

Then the cards quickly flew through the air. Whistling by like lost feathers from a bird's hind.

When your homes burned in an arsonist's fire it left behind cinders for you to clench in your tensed fist.

All there is here is air.

Air in the wind. That blew an hour ago.
And made her love winter.

Now there's just the winter and the air.
But nothing else to hold her love.