reflecting

i draw an incomplete natal chart for you
because it seems this is the only way i understand
tragedy anymore. it never occurred to me —
it never mattered —
you were born on a full moon in scorpio,
of course you were.
your first house profection year,
mars in virgo activated by a square.
tell me, can i map out the years of silence,
fill in the gaps where there should have been
something more tangible, something to make
reference to that i can hold in my hands?
if i pull cards from my deck will you be there?
there’s nothing that makes sense in the linear
that i can comfortably, ethically, share.
so i do what i always refused to,
i search for you in me,
in (my) memory.

i don’t know where to put all of the secrets we kept.
as an eleven year old, i picked up a CD
in a wal-mart in saskatchewan
and remembered you that day
and decided
i would rather die than tell the truth.
i would rather grow my hair long and
starve myself, i would rather
do unkind things to my body
than see you in the mirror.
(he told me you were a bad friend
and what he did next to our bodies
made it a truth and a promise.)

your mother tells us how you died
and she gazes at me when i cry.
she is angry, she knows something,
she is not saying it.
your father clings to my mom and wordlessly drowns.
your brothers are somewhere downtown,
having new babies, mourning amongst themselves.
i nearly throw up leaving your house because there’s
the basement, your parents redid the stairs, the closet’s still here.
i look into the shadows, i remember the tile now,
i understand why
the image of you made me hate myself.