There used to be a big oak tree leading to the house where I grew up. It was broad and thick, but didn’t overreach. It just was. It marked the end of a long driveway, along a road with many such driveways, so when we directed someone to the house, we always said, “turn into the driveway with the big oak tree, and go all the way to the end.”

They cut down the tree a few years after we stopped living there. I think the city said they had to. My aunt and uncle still lived on the same property, and later my grandparents too. So I had to turn up that same driveway, which felt all wrong without the tree. I didn’t know how to give directions anymore, either. I started to say, “turn when you see an empty space where there should be a tree.”

I couldn’t see the place any other way.

I didn’t know you well.

Didn’t even really like you--

if we’re being honest.

But here you are

ten years later.

To think--if you’d lived

I’d have forgotten you long ago.

But instead I still wonder

about the bridge that let you go

and the water that swallowed you.

If you were afraid

or changed your mind.

They say it happens.

I remember

your father’s voice on the phone,

the hollowness of it.

Gathering together

your toothbrush and alarm clock,

apples and coffee mug.

The striking banality of

things left behind.

Poem II

the other day i wrote a poem

but i was drinking in a red room

and i think I lost it.

now someone will read it under the dim lamps

and wonder why,

on the back of a tiny menu,

there is writing

beginning with the words:

“I’m so scared of imaginary things”

and continuing with nightmares of spiders

and waking up cold.

i forget how it ends.

drinking this time wasn’t like the last time—

with the whiskey sours

when grief made me scratch my own hands

bloody.

this time it was just for fun.

until i lost the damn poem.