Sweet Potato Haircut

He, shining in the sun that glows behind the haze of memory that envelops me 

as I recall when we 

drove through the summer streets to see what it would be like to fill the unspoken 

prophecy of youth, we, all skin and dazzling insecurity, 

blinding to the eye and warm to the touch 

of touch that blossoms butterflies from the perch of the pelvis, 

sweet sickness in their stead spreading warmly

through the belly. I remember feeling beautiful when I was with him, 

I was part of an understood binary pairing that settled the turbulent tremors

of adolescence that quietly tore through me. We, at the gallery, for he had asked me, 

my beautiful friend with whom I could, with whom I can, 

laugh and puff patio smoke up to the twilight and find immeasurable annoyance at. 

My friend who I found on the first day of work when I was 16, 

and he, a recent art school graduate, 

dark and vibrantly certain, somehow, of his path toward the sun, 

clamoring up the scaffolding of sky with unwaveringly wide eyes. 

He is the kind who drops a jar of tomato sauce and it bounces, the glass laughing in the light, glad to be at his feet. He is the kind who overcomes, who rebounds from the depths of sorrow and addiction and loss to sparkle in the setting sun, 

to pull from his insides breathtaking, mobilizing art that, with the millionth stroke of his brush, sets the city straight and speaks undeniable truth, casts untainted light into the wide dark. 

To imagine this place vacant of him, 

a big emptiness looms not only in my sturdy understanding of home 

but in the city itself, where his hours and days and months and years of meaningful work resound indefinitely through the freshly changed streets, 

the freshly changed streets where we will no longer be putzing aimlessly toward dawn. 

The sun is calling, and he must go, and in his stead are settled butterflies 

and steady friendship 

and great love and 

art,

lots of beautiful art.