Page 31 - Contrast2012

Ed Lasher

5:30 a.m.

It's been years now, but people are still mourning·
the kid who flew his car into a streetlight
on the corner of South College and Main
only hours after his high school graduation, while drunk
uncles and aunts and all his friends and family
slept. Early signs of day tinted blue

the black night sky. Red and blue
blood and bruises brushed against the early morning
calm as a police phone call woke up his family
who rushed to the hospital behind ambulance lights.
As the LV.dripped, half-conscious, punch-drunk
mumbling faded out and his mother stroked his blood-matted mane

for the last time. At South College and Main
metal rubble and shattered glass still flickered red and blue
reflections of police cars flashing. A cop drank
coffee, watching the cleanup crew, smelling the morning
and breathing its pleasing dampness by the broken streetlight.
The kid's endless smiles sit framed in photographs in the empty family

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