Losing Grip

It was two weeks until the end of the summer

I remember because at the end of the summer

You can feel time slipping

The way I felt her slipping

The way we all were slipping

Her parents asked me questions I couldn’t answer

Told me she was gone, and they needed me

I didn’t tell them she’d been gone for a while now,

and that even I couldn’t find her.

Visions of a girl

Lying hazy on the ground

On the beach, in the sand of the ocean

Lines got so blurry then, we could have been blind.

There’s an image of us on a peak

Gently slipping

Like sand through an hourglass

We danced on the edge

We stood with clasped hands

Broken nails, bitten down

We stood as a monument

To the worst kind of friends

Thinking youth like a spell could render us immortal

We sped down a road like a truck with no brakes

We pointed our toes

And dipped lungs into water

Choking on ecstasy, drowning in haste

And I should have stepped forward

When I saw you were slipping

I should have known better

Than to watch while you fell

You were the girl, with the hair

Like a halo in tendrils

But you walked oh so slowly

Like a sure-footed child.

I hung up on your mother

Hearing sobs in her throat

Feeling hung on your verdict

And the burn of your rope

I mourn every night for the girl I thought could fly

Feeling alone on my back on a night full of stars

I mourn for an angel, fell out of the sky

Too perfect for here, and too scarred

          -Rebecca Najjar