That Night

That Night

Do you remember the day that you died?
I was home lauding it over Grandpa
saying, It’s not like she’s dead.
while Aunt Tammy looked on with
eyeliner to her temples (who did she
think she was, anyway, Cleopatra?).
And here it turned out you were
dying twenty minutes away on
black concrete when that poor man
hit you and you flew free of us
and them when the world must have
seemed nonexistent and hazy as if
you were in the depths of a cloud
with only the sound of a dry twig snapping
that was really your bone peeking out
from your calf to awake you before
the air stopped coming to your brain
and you lay down. We were twenty
minutes apart, you and I. Me, weeping on
our steps because I was wrong and you,
losing consciousness, clothed in stillness as
the sirens called us both to movement. Me
to you and you to that open door just beyond
that crack formed deep in your skull through
which your spirit slipped away, silent as if you
trod on cotton or clouds.