By Susan Schulz
When Rob got a Mohawk over Christmas break without telling me, I walked by him at the front
door and said nice haircut
and went and played Scrabble with his Mom.
His eyes were like March and flicker and now they’re gone.
When someone says is there anything you would like to keep in his memory you should never say no to be polite, you should say
yes.
I would like his bedroom on New Year’s Eve. Dark
and the Smiths, dark and the Cure, dark and the Psychedelic Furs,
me with my red Molly Ringwald hair and him with his new Mohawk
on the floor;
give me that.
Or give me us on a red stained picnic table under the streetlight after work
finishing off a basket of curly-q fries loaded with salt and ketchup and vinegar
and sprinting down Beach Road after without puking.
Give me back Niagara Falls at night with him and Nigel high
and then finally not climbing over the rail into the falling colors
though it seemed like a reasonable option at the time.
Give me Husker Du and 10,000 Maniacs jumping from the speakers of his Chevy Nova,
TDK mix-tapes of Simple Minds, Elvis Costello, Echo and the Bunnymen—
titles carefully in his handwriting between the lines.
Give me the way Lake Erie looked that night before the storm from the balcony
where we were not supposed to be
and the way he looked at me before I boarded that bus in Rochester
and the way his shoulders felt when he said why are we always such jerks to each other?
Give me that.
Susan Schulz is a Physical Therapist in Westchester County NY. She has a special interest in incorporating Tai Chi in her wok with seniors. She is a member of the Hudson Valley Writer's Center and the Mahopac Poetry Workshop.