Page 32 - Contrast2012

room now, largely un-locked-at. His family
no longer cries at phone calls for him, no longer maintains
his room how he left it, no longer lights
candles each year on his birthday to blow
them out thinking how old he'd be now. But they are mourning
because time has drunk
up all the hurt they had left, drunk
up the last drops of him, splintered him off of the family
tree. Still, sometimes they wake up bruised in the morning
with shattered glass hearts spread across South College and Main,
when black night becomes barely blue
with daylight,
early enough that the streetlights
still glow. They get up and groggy walk slumped like a drunk
in the park at night, and they only can think how he blew
away on the wind, away from his family,
fell off the earth at South College and Main
as the sun came to life in the morning.

30 I contrast