life's sentences

for H.R.

a school friend fell off a terrace
and died.
                  i serve life sentences—
only words to flower her grave
i'll never visit. even after she disappeared
her story was still visible to everyone
on instagram. the usually tap-pastable
skip-awayable cringe rewitnessed
as a testimony of the brief and crazy fragility
of life.

i'm appropriating her— i've thought more of her
on the day she died than i ever did in the ten years
we schooled together. i try to remember—

she used to have short bob-cut hair
which she now seems to have grown out (of?)
her hairband was the brightest of all
(as red as the proof of her fall?)

words she can't hear is all i have for her
for the ash she now is and i soon will be.