For Stephanie, Who Deserved Better Than Two Poems

.
you had cancer
and you died
and we hadn’t talked for years

here’s what I
still have from
our youth besides guilt

pictures of you
in Mission Creek
on the train tracks
and leaning against a grave

a small smudge
of blue on the
t-shirt I wore
when we painted your pool

your fingerprints
on the CD
we played every
morning I drove you to school

a poem I wrote in your room

particles of light
that bounced off you and embedded in
my skin