i.
you were simple hearted and liked the incoherent speech that you got from jimson weed.
i always nodded and let you talk so that i'd forget to be embarrased.

We went into town and bought junk jewlery
with too big bits of cubic zirconium. your fingers looked like the fins on a sea raven, crooked
and reddish purple from the bruises you got from trying to pull rings that you married yourself to off your fingers.

ii.
you had a violinists grace and a sheller's personality. you were silver-tongued and knew your way around back alleys and over chain-link fences. we only had one
in our town and you had to help me get my ballet flats into the rusted spaces.

you were full of pipe dreams and you wore shorts in the dead of winter. you said it made your skin
feel like you were cold-blooded, but I never wanted to touch it. we would lay in the grass

that was still covered in an inch of snow and contemplate about what pink gin tasted like and where the passenger pigeons really went.
they used to cover the sky, but when i looked up there wasn't anything but gray.

your legs always looked cold.

iii.
you lost your sheet music.

there were notes about shelducks on the sides, describing bright colors and their diet.
you said you played the euphonium. i liked making up catchphrases for you

and you hated them.
you highly disliked the fact that i was doing a commentary on your life
but when i told you that you made my day, all day, every day, i liked to imagine that you would whistle pretty tunes to me.
i'd throw my head back and watch the v-formations of geese make their way across the sun.

we always walked in circles, but i didn't mind because your hands were like marble and you smelled like sea tangle.