Ugh, don’t you just hate it? You’re looking for a place to sit The plastic, mean girls are looking Watching what kinda style you’re cooking Those shady mean boys, I mean girls Whispering about you clutching their pearls They invite you over; you sit down getting a hug You think they are your friends all snug Then, wait a second, your back feels weird All of your trust issues are smeared You touch your back, now a wound Blood is dripping, now you’re doomed Those bloody backstabbers Those greedy moneygrabbers Now get revenge, kiss them on the cheek You’re wounds will heal but their lives will be bleak

I want to die on my one hundredth birthday In spectacular fashion A manner in which the world will awe Obliterated by a laser Shot from outer space While I am trekking through the desert Sliced in half in battle As I am apprehending A notorious serial killer Floating in the ocean On an inflatable mermaid raft As the world’s largest whale breaches And swallows me whole (Raft and all, though the raft is later expelled) Spontaneously combusting Into stardust and fireworks As I blow out my candles Launched from the peak Of Kilimanjaro By the nasty kick of a rude mountain goat Collapsing into a puddle Before being evaporated into a cloud And rained down over Mardi Gras Fantastically imploded Attempting a true witch’s hex Summoning a demon Who carries me to hell Whatever form my death takes I want it to be witnessed and mythologized By people who love and hate me alike In conflicting stories Of my magnificence and insufferability To become folklore Urban legend Cautionary or tall tale… Drow

He lay just up the road from my father, the young man I grew to consider my friend though we  never met in this realm. On our way to my father’s grave, I was strangely drawn to one nearby. A  few small stuffed animals had been placed around it, as if they could either be standing guard or  keeping company. I walked up to read the gravestone and learned it was the final resting place  of a youth of seventeen. The offerings, loving expressions of grief from his friends, likely their  first experience of death with someone so close to their own age. I felt as if I were  sharing it  with them. My father had been closer in age to when one naturally crosses the veil,  but in a  way he introduced. On future visits I always made it a point to say hello to my young friend.