Coaching Soccer on Elysium Fields

I still think of you and wonder

if I had been home when you came by

and if we had talked, things might be different

but I wasn’t home and we never spoke

Last night, I watched an artist paint a skeleton face

on pavement at a street festival and had to leave

because you were in my head and I wished we

had spoken that hot summer day when you came by

I remembered a rich preppy kid

who wanted to be a soccer star

and by your senior year

you were pretty good

I remembered the day you came by and said

your dad came home from a business trip and told

your mom he was moving to Chicago to be president

of another firm and he wasn’t taking your family

I thought of all the times you came by to vent and talk

how your dad showed up at your graduation

with his secretary the age of your older sister

your mother’s tears, your anger, the gift you didn’t want

October of that hot summer, two of your friends

came by the house and told me it wasn’t suicide

that you were happy at the wedding in Kentucky

and that you were planning to leave the big city

They said you had a briefcase of money

your car title and you were not going back

that you were not thinking of dying

that you were making plans to live

They said they talked with the sheriff

in Kentucky where two hikers found you

hanging in a tree – flesh dripping

from your bones; they asked about the briefcase

The sheriff said they found your car

abandoned nearby – he insisted no briefcase

was found, said the coroner called it suicide

and anyway, drug dealers deserved to die

It is twenty-five years since I talked with your mom

she said your sister and brother were getting by

that Lafayette was empty now and she was thinking

of moving back to Wisconsin where you are buried

I don’t believe you killed yourself and

I refuse to envision you pleading or fighting

for your life; I don’t care how you died only that

I wasn’t there when you came by…wanting to live

11-2-19