Ledge
Amy and I joked about eyebrows
in eighth grade because once you noticed one pair,
you saw them all: finely plucked,
fuzz spilling on foreheads,
monobrows like Frida,
usually on boys with glasses.
Suddenly our peers were reduced
to the bridges between their eyes.
Ballerina Amy was the first to date.
Zach would sweep her long red hair
out from under backpack straps, carry her flute,
and furrow his behemoth eyebrows.
I don’t know if Zach was in the room
when Mrs. Weetman read us the news
that final day of ninth grade:
“girl rescued from herself.”
Amy once wrote a poem
paraphrasing a Third Eye Blind song
Why don’t you step back from that ledge my friend
Hers was the first elegy I wrote,
Thursday before Christmas six years later.
The church was full.
I sat in the first pew with my best friends
from junior high and our geography teacher.
The pastor nodded toward us,
our backs as wooden as the seats.
At the podium the light poured
through stained glass.
Standing in the half glow,
I talked to Amy about eyebrows.