I miss you, Maya.
I miss your paprika skin and the way
We observed boys as if they were mangoes at a market.
I miss the smell of thunder clinging to dampened hair,
The mountains of leaves we hid in,
The bond we forged over the discovery of a dead bird,
Tears spilled on broken wings.
Your mother will not look at me now,
Afraid to reveal the lead weight fettered to her heart.
Around me, the world seems to spin a little slower,
The colors are too bright, the nights cavernous,
The town obscured by a thin sheath of silence.
Only the wind has the courage to whisper your name,
Maya, Maya, floating discreetly in the breeze.
In English, we wrote an essay on people who inspired us.
Mine was about you.
Nobody knew what to say when I stepped up to the podium
And I suddenly couldn’t move and I couldn’t see, and the worst part is
I couldn’t get enough air, and I was gasping, eyes streaming,
Until the teacher broke the spell that had fallen over the class
And reached me just as I crumbled.
It was a good essay, too.
It was about the day we were followed home from school
By Piper and his gang and they got big and mean and rough
And they threw apples and rocks at the two bright, damaged girls
From the wrong families, the wrong neighborhoods.
You were so brave, Maya.
You flew at them with tooth and nail.
You screamed a battle cry and I swear,
I saw a flame in your throat, you were so loud.
Piper literally almost fell over from shock.
The memory always freeze-frames on the same shot of you,
Hair streaming, two stars embedded in your face,
A lupine grin carved on your lips,
All brazen strength, bared teeth, raised hackles.
Piper got away with a black eye and a cut lip,
You escaped with bloody knees, your pride intact.
I wish I could’ve done something, Maya.
I wish I could’ve gotten under your skin, into your veins, close to your heart.
I wish I could have caught the tumor
Captured under a palpitating pulse.
I wish I’d noticed the signs, the shadows under your eyes, no sleep, no laughter,
No sound.
Small highways of blue blood interwoven into pale wrists,
And the ever-present yet intangible scent of decaying roses,
The perfume of funeral homes,
Lingering.
Seeing you, slight and gaunt, under the pitying sheen
Of the fluorescent hospital lights would have been too much.
That’s why I never came to visit.
Not a day goes by without me regretting that decision.
No goodbye, Maya.
It was a Thursday when we made our way over the rocks and branches
To the riverbed, autumn-quick and ice cold,
Before the end of you, even before the beginning of the end of you,
And we heard the cry, far away, so eerie and melancholic, of the wolves
That hunted in this region.
I asked you why they were calling, what they could possibly be saying to each other
That was so painful.
You sat still and pale against the background of fiery colors
The water slowly sprinkling your feet with tears,
And said that this was their way of saying goodbye
Nothing more than a monosyllabic form of
Lamentation,
Whether for the death of one of their own,
Or for the killing of prey.
I wish you could see the river now.
The snow has covered the banks, forming a protective cage
Of ice around a black heart.
And all the trees are laden with sharp icicles,
Substitution for the beauty of the lost foliage.
I miss you so much, Maya.
My lamentation for you is like that of the wolves,
Few understand it.
You had the most beautiful hands in the world,
You knew the name of every butterfly that ever existed,
You loved zebras, pianos, and marble cake, anything black and white.
You were love and vivacity incarnated.
You were my alter-ego.
But now you’ve crossed the line
To a realm where I cannot whisper my secrets to you
Or hear you sing
Or compare how much we’ve grown together, and grown apart as well.
I hope to join you, someday.
Will you wait for me, Maya?
Will you?