You Never Outgrow the Hometown Blues

In your mind you’ll always be a sun-gold child,
stretched-out limbs in cut-off shorts,
loitering with intent in high school halls
to a hair-rock soundtrack.
We hear the locker doors slam.
and bounce your words away.

On the blanched curve of the dike
boys dance the old soft-shoe with other girls.
They are blind to your passing
as you cruise by with your muddy river song.

Your name is synonymous
with a short story in the town’s long memory,
shelved like awkward school pictures
on your mother’s mantlepiece.

Maybe you flew with a mayfly’s lust,
slick dying in the streets,
but that ghost haunts only your timeline.
It’s not in the yearbook photos.