Adam Jon

What makes the grass grow?
Blood.

This student knows it already;
Her notebook filled beyond reason
with formulas and drawings.
academics and vocabulary beyond
my own.

It’s filled with dates and battles,
journal entries, and topographies of acceptance
of things that shouldn’t be accepted,
knowledge far beyond trigonometry, syntax,
biology, beyond happiness.

It’s filled with the cold scent of funeral homes,
Natural Ice and hash at lunch,
gas stations (too many fucking gas stations)
holidays in houses, apartments,
a hotel, and two cars,

the boy

who said he loved her
but he didn’t
In so many ways,
too cruel to even be recorded,
much less believed.

It’s all in the notebook
behind her quiet eyes.
She’s out all over,
now a color her peers can’t see.

The classmate next to her glances
across his desk, as if to cheat,
looking for her answer to sex,
heartbreak, or suicide.

And I almost stop him from the
truth, face melting and real
like Raiders of the Lost Arc.

But it’s too late.

I put his skeleton in the pile
with the others.

The bell rings and she floats,
ethereal, out all over.