for Kate O’Donnell

I need to tell you how days drag now
that you’re gone; no phone calls or Skype.

The light is never bright or warm. No one 
wants to dance. Today I emptied an old bottle

of your pills, packed it with Hindu Kush, 
drove to the beach. Lit up.

It’s legal now in California.

I play your favorite music; Buena Vista 
Social Club, Ibrahim Ferrer.

Remember that yellow bikini you used to wear? 
It made you look invincible, like a star.

I’d wear the Che Guevara cap you brought 
from Cuba when we danced, girl on girl
to Dos Gardenias. Our song.

Your breasts crushing mine.
Those signature gardenias pinned in your hair.

Now I dance alone, my screen dark. 
I will not weep. You’d hate it.

Since you died, I play Dos Gardenias 
every day, and the way the palm trees sway 
breaks my heart.

You’re out there, dancing, 
aren’t you?

Your yellow bikini a beacon, if only I could find it 
in the star-crossed night.

If I pull the drapes it is always night. 

I cannot see the seasons,
or you, sneaking off in the half-light 
like there’s someplace you’d rather be.

Come Monday, it will grow cold and dark 
before people leave work.

Maybe you should go with them? 

When I photograph you,
I stash my feelings in my pocket
where you won’t find them, 
where the fabric sticks to my 
thighs.

Go downtown, you’d whisper, back 
when it mattered, push my face 
into your sunlit forever.

Can I help it if we are now on different clocks?

A hot pink August has stumbled
into our November like a second chance. 
Why can’t you see it?

Come Sunday, the saving of daylight 
will no longer matter.
If I photograph the light, maybe you 
will no longer matter.

I grab my camera and shoot the dawn 
from the roof of our building.
Catch you slipping out the lobby. 

My world goes dark without you.

She will date your boyfriend.
She’ll do it better than you ever did. 
She’ll have nothing but time.
He'll start showing up when you leave, 
train her to make him the perfect BLT, 
(crusts off, avocado on the side), 
encourage his cheating heart,
suck his dick so good he’ll think 
he’s died and gone to Jesus.

Your sister will borrow your clothes,
and look better in them than you ever did. 
Someone will see her with your boyfriend 
at the Grove, agonize for days
before deciding not to tell you.
Meanwhile he’ll buy her that fedora you 
admired in Nordstrom’s window, the last one 
in your size.

When you complain, your mother
will tell you it’s about time you learned to share.

While you’re at work, your sister will tend your garden, 
weed the daisies, coax your gardenias into bloom.
No matter how many times you remind her, 
she will one day forget to lock the gate;
your cat and your lawn chairs will disappear. 

Your mother will say it serves you right.

Your sister will move into your boyfriend’s
big house in Laurel Canyon. He will ignore her, 
and she will make a half-hearted suicide attempt; 
you’ll rescue her once again.

Your mother will wash her hands of the pair of you, 
then get cancer and die.

Smell the white gardenias in the yard.
Cherish their heady perfume. Float them in a crystal bowl. 
Forgive your sister as she has forgiven you.

Midnight, and again I’m chasing 
sleep: its fresh-linen smell and
deep sinking, but when I close my eyes I see
my son, closing his eyes. I’m afraid of that dream, 
the tape looped demise as cancer claims him.

My artist friend cancels her L.A. trip. Unplugs the 
internet. Reverts to source. If cancer
will not let go its grip then she will
return its embrace. Squeeze the life out of 
her life. Ride it for all it’s worth.`

By the time his friends arrive at the cabin 
my son is exhausted, stays behind while
the others set out on a hike. He picks up the phone.
“Mom, it’s so quiet here. The air has never 
been breathed before. It’s snowing.”

I put on Mozart. A warm robe. Make a pot
of camomile tea. The view from my 8th floor 
window, spectacular, the sliver moon, the stark, 
neon-smeared buildings, their windows dark.
Sometimes I think I am the only one not sleeping.

My artist friend wants to draw the rain. She 
wants to paint her memories, wrap the canvas 
around her like a burial shroud.

Tonight, a girl in a yellow dress stands below
my window, top lit by a street lamp, her long shadow 
spilling into the street. She’s waiting for someone.

I want to tell my friend I’ll miss her. 
I want to tell my son I understand.
I want to tell the girl he won’t be coming. 
That it’s nothing personal. He died young.

beyond the kitchen’s swinging door,
beyond the order wheel and the pass-through piled 
high with bacon, hash browns, biscuits and gravy,

past the radio, tuned to 101.5-FM
All Country - All the Time,
past the truckers overwhelming the counter, 
all grab-ass and longing.

in the middle of morning rush you’ll 
catch her, in a wilted pink uniform, 
coffee pot fused in her grip, staring over 
the top of your head

you’ll follow her gaze, out the fly-specked, plate 
glass windows, past the parking lot,

watch as she eyes those 16-wheelers barreling 
down the highway, their mud guards
adorned with chrome silhouettes of naked women 
who look nothing like her.

the cruel sun throws her inertia in her face. 
this is what regret looks like.

maybe she’s searching for that hot day in August 
when she first walked away from you.

there’s a choking sound
a semi makes, when it pulls off the 
highway; that downshift a death rattle 
she’s never gotten used to.

maybe she’s looking for a way back. 
maybe she’s ready to come home.

(But for now) she’s lost herself
between the register and the door, the endless 
business from table to kitchen, she’s

as much leftover as those sunny side eggs, 
yolks hardening on your plate.