How he gawked the lawn. How he whipped the planeteria of his blue-green train—so casually pulled

like a petticoat over his head. How he died one mid-August after school. Throat purple with song.

The bus driver’s downcast squint when she told us, and after this, stopped coming back to the wooded

church. Swear I saw him there: catwalking past green upholstered pews, shocking, turning every stray

eye at the altar call. Collecting galaxies. Added them, like jewels to a secret slit in the dress. Before dark.

Before tadpoles or tragedy. Before we could follow him into the free reign of no ceiling, nothing to

ribcage. Hollow, then flight. Cattails bent in the slight wind. And how he ate raspberries from our

still-believing hands. How suede patchouli. How god-awful iridescent it was to see his cold breath

clipped. Daylight blued. His feathers all over the backyard morning. Poplar wall before the silent car.

Before surrender. Before going inside. Followed his paramour into the whitening of treetops, fanned

his deck of cards, angel numbers. How sometimes, I still see him. At the library. Between pages ripped

apart, unread. Stoplight before runway. On the red-eye flight’s plane window. Pool ball shot into table

pocket. This cedared un-stillness. Shuffling the musk, the muslin like it meant nothing. Dirt driveway.

The harp, buried. Never played. How he made an omen of himself. Of this rusted water-tower town.

Looking for that girl. Never larkspur. Never me.

Harrison Hamm is a poet, screenwriter, and essayist originally from rural Tennessee, now based in Los Angeles. A 2023 Filmmaker's Workshop Fellow with New York Stage and Film and a 2022 Fellow in Diverso's The Minority Report, his writing can be found at his website and published/forthcoming in About Place Journal, Broken Antler, Fatal Flaw Literary, Half Mystic, and more.