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Photo © 2015 Jennifer Wagner

If smiles light up rooms,

yours lights up a thousand

rooms in my heart-dark-need

for such a beacon.

Yours, my own little

prince of peace.

Yours, my own little

light of the world.

© 2015 Jennifer Wagner

After Suicide

He still goes over to his house,
sits in his room,
says a lifetime of goodbyes to ashes
--what's left
when the oxygen of hope thins,
choked out by the rasping fire-of-lies
believed at just-turned twenty.


Remembering often in stories,
as the living do
of the dead--
he laughs,
cries,
swears,
breaks, bitterly.


And when reads to me what he writes,
how it is to lose a brother,
memorializing what was,
he ends it
the only way he can.


You don’t know what you’ve done to me.



© 2015 Jennifer Wagner


At the end of August my son's best friend since he was 11 years old committed suicide at the age of 20. A crater-sized hole has been created, and though I know it is a pain that will remain for the rest of his life, I pray for it to lessen for him and for all those who loved Baily. He is greatly missed.

Prince

Prince and me, circa 1977

He was puffy and fluffy

and rarely barked.

I was in the car

that ran over him

the night he died. Six years old

and sitting in the backseat

between my mom and Shirley

as we headed out for dinner. Louie’s Chinese.

Shirley’s husband, Harry,

was the driver. A sweet, adorable man.

A diabetic whose foot later developed gangrene.

He felt terrible, of course.

I felt indescribable.

How do you say

how you feel,

your first prince’s yelps

stinging everything?

© 2015 Jennifer Wagner