Memento Mori

a poem about loss

Your suicide makes me think
of elementary school when we were
taught “stop, drop and roll” in case of fire,
but they never taught us how to avoid the
fire inside
so instead you tucked and rolled under the
front bumper of a moving truck and the
fire inside exploded like a galaxy breathed
into life and I spend every day trying to
outrun the burn. I catch myself thinking of you,
that same old scab. I am tired of calling you my dead friend.
Come back.