it wasn’t until after you were gone that I realized
I hadn’t known you at all
apart from the names of your boyfriends, slurring into other names on even or odd weeks, your handmade addiction to Midwestern pico-de-gallo, the memory of a hippie skirt you wore for days in Chicago, a suspected experimentation with marijuana in high school and the pencil-drawings on the insides of your closet walls, the space ship look of the blue pen-ink tattoo you tried to grant your own stomach and the gift of a butterfly one Chris gave you to cover it up
this is ash now
that I couldn’t bring myself to lift your shirt, pull your skirt, to see its wings
when you lay there with your rounded breasts
your refrigerated arms
it was then that I began to think of your life
as stain glass windows
as if I had only ever seen
your lack-light, monotone exterior
and even that was brilliant
behind the surging masses
I stood a long while
the dominating figure of Notre Dame
overhead, near Ile Saint Louis
and the Seine’s soundless
city division
before Death hunted your left temple
in the impact of a broken-window flight
you were intoxicating to be near
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