It is the middle of July
I recall your stories about being a kid in PA, biking
through plumes of gnats and choking on a few
there is an old photo of you
framed by masking tape inside the cover
of this journal, like the source
of a waterfall (don’t ever change your ways)
every page thereafter
is connected to you.
It is these days when my skin
resembles your per-fect-ly roasted marshmallow—
remember when I smeared Coppertone spf 4 on your back and said,
“you already look like the bottle”?
You taught me to befriend the sun.
We don’t talk too often, or too specifically,
and in the absence of sound sits a little girl
witnessing the momentum of her father’s heart;
that which carried her piggyback to bed, “low bridge,”
which taught her rhythm with pencils and a phone book,
who treated strangers like best friends through a violent divorcing
of dreams and reality,
who showed her Mumia Abu-Jamal and Michael Parenti
when the class made pilgrim hats for Columbus day,
who cheered all of her teammates like they were prodigies,
who hugged her long enough, and tight enough,
for her to really feel it
who took the raw material of addiction:
30 years of pills, tears, meth pipes, club closets,
hard hat lunch breaks, budweiser, bathroom locks—
Molly and Andy, on the floor eating chili dogs
never not believing in you—
and gave it to a mirror, and saw the inverse image,
and stood in the moment of your heart (nothing can harm me at all)
in the gap between what you have lost
and what has lost you
and knowing here is a place of butterflies and murder
you never walk your bike uphill, panting
you choose the hardest route
and turn around
(oh, my waterfall)
alchemized.