was a year ahead in high school.
Summers he swept Seminary South, maintenance boy
who slipped into the bathroom stall,
grabbed a roll of toilet paper for a pillow,
locked the door, slept through most of the shift.
Checked in, checked out. We played basketball after.
In a million other universes I’m running courts,
kissing strangers, drinking vinegars sharp before the doctor,
watching cats and dogs refuse our clumsy hands in creation.
But here I’m fixed, seeing them all at once. That’s the price.
We speak different languages, even then:
his sleep a small rebellion against the fluorescent hours,
my shots arcing toward the rim like prayers no one answers.
The body remembers what the news erases:
a boy napping on porcelain, dreaming perhaps
of something beyond the mall’s endless tile,
beyond the war that finally claimed him.
I keep the image like a bruise under skin,
how we shared sweat and silence,
how the stall door clicked shut on his rest,
how everything since feels borrowed.
We all refuse participation sometimes.
The animals know. The dead know better.
