by Jordan Ranft
Along Mendocino Avenue, oaks bow their crooked heads.
Wreaths of white flowers hang from the bricks
outside the high school. Unlit candles bear the frozen pose
of saints. A murder of blue mylar balloons clunks in the breeze.
I decide she was a brilliant student. I give myself this mercy.
Every dead teenager will be remembered for how they danced,
and how they danced beyond doubt, full of joy and fury
like a storm, choking roads and leveling houses by the row.
I picture her ambling across the field
in a clump of friends. Her laugh shearing through their chatter-
then she’s gone. There are cards with messages,
scrawled in red marker, taped to a shrine at her school.
May her mother remember burnt popcorn and
terrible television. Cartwheels and loose teeth.
Arguments that shook loose bolts from the house’s frame,
but left her in awe of the thunderhead blooming stubborn
in her daughter’s chest. The child that grew in her,
still does, and always will.
Jordan Ranft is a Best of the Net and Pushcart-nominated poet. He placed third at the 2015 National Poetry Slam representing Team Berkeley. His chapbook, Said The Worms, was published by Wrong Publishing in 2023. His work appears or is forthcoming in Carve, Boulevard, Frontier Poetry, Iron Horse Literary Review, Bear Review, and others. He lives in Northern California, where he works as a therapist.