» Poetry

Learning of the Death of a Classmate

Anna Leonard

I’m thinking about Will, who I didn’t know well,

Will who killed himself seven or eight years ago,

I’m thinking about his car in Seashore State Park,

Will’s car parked in the woods somewhere by the bay

and the poor soul who recognized him as human,

calcium white against all that green or perhaps

blueing like cyanotype, and I’m considering

the quality of sound the water might’ve made

through the window, if the window was open,

and whether a note was on Will’s chest

or in the passenger or if he thought about me ever,

me who knew Will only from a distance

in the middle school cafeteria, Will who

will only have existed for seventeen years forever

and the water, if proximity to that pulsing wound of earth

made of dying a kindness, if death is a kindness,

and I’m making Will about myself,

who I also didn’t know well, myself who,

seven or eight years ago, was a child, too,

who learned then that children could die alone,

that many of us will die alone, alone

but for the gargling, the wet, the water, the will.