The Beautiful Dead

Lauren Tivey

Word Count 251

They were all my friends, and they died. - Jim Carroll, “People Who Died”

All friends or some variation thereof;
the point is I knew them, they were here,
and they floated away—some literally.

Glenn off the bay, capsized rowing scull,
his taut 19-year-old body later retrieved
by the Coast Guard in two feet of icy water.

Russian roulette got Quimby at 28 in a drug den,
but in my photo, he’s relaxed on my couch, beer
in hand, all flannel and ball cap, grinning.

Darlene and Stacey, the Big C. Mike enslaved
to Oxycontin, a quick deterioration. Eric hit
on the pedestrian horror of the pavement.

Sweet, leonine Aaron, apparent suicide at 18
by hanging, but mysterious circumstances, so
no one really knows. Later, his unmarked grave.

Darren disappearing into the woods one night
during winter. Drunk, haunted, and defeated,
his frozen body found face down in the snow.

Wayno made it longer than anyone would’ve
guessed, to a camper van in the desert, watching
coyotes and hawks, but I’m not sure what took him.

Then they found Craig’s body beside the river
last month, and my heart cracked—I mean, really
cracked, you know? My close friend of 45 years.

And I could be next. A city bus barreling down.
A mass shooting. Wrong place, wrong time.
But more likely the quiet passage of age,

despite my skydiving, risk-taking, youthful
diet of drugs, smoking. I can still be beautiful
in death, if not tragic: I’m only old by chance.

Lauren is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Moroccan Holiday (winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize), a full-length collection, Traveler in the Sunset Clouds, and hybrid collaboration, Fire Carousel. Her work appears in Connotation Press, LETTERS, and Grimoire. She teaches at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida.