Was it you 

or was it me?

That last goodbye. 

**

We walked the numbers to 18 –

to the 12th – a final sea of blue gowns.

Before, though, we practiced in the 8th.

Ceremonial honors of a closed chapter.

**

We wrote that year in laughter,

Asked for the cutest delivery drivers

70 year old, “you should see the others”

ghost encounters, told neath cold covers.

**

Still they never felt like endings,

those haunting glimpses.

Our books and movies frozen

now in that inner eye of mine.

I see us seeing things I can no longer see, only imagine like the Ferris wheel destroyed

whose top I’ll never know. 

**

We moved to the final four, but half of that is all I own. 

A brief detour to another world,

where I learned I’d walk alone.

When I returned, I was cursed;

I’d been a coward

built by lies,

ones you would never find.

**

I knew while you still smiled

during group projects, tennis practice and homecoming.

The shift in motion, tiny little steps,

like the ants that colonized your abandoned ice cream bar on our senior day at the park.