– Year Sixteen –

It was an empty summer. We sat in cars and said nothing.
Maybe looked for things to break or sat around in one place
for too long. Always looking for some new place to be.
We hit the freeways and my boy would roll down
the backseat window and put the side
of his face out for a bit. Til the cheekbone went a little red.
In the parking lots we used to play bloody knuckles.
The only way you could win is that you had to like the pain
a little bit. Sometimes there was a girl and you wished
the girl would stay a little longer, or not make you have to say it.
To both hold and deliver you. The only thing you ever know how to do
is to ask for too much. So you ask for too much and all of the days
just keep accumulating. All the memories are newer and you forget
more things. Even the body has newer stuff. Not quite
the same, just a little different until it’s completely different.
And you think, will this be what it’s like when I’m gone. Having
to adjust to this new thing I am, knowing I was something else, before.
I went to two funerals at the end of the summer. Two of my friends
got thrown out the back of a truck because they were racing
down the street and the driver lost control of the vehicle. Sometimes
I wonder what that driver's newer self looks like; if 16 is the year
that won’t shake loose; that never changes when everything else does.
At the end of 16 we were at our buddy’s house when another friend
came in, bloodied and beat up just looking for a place to sleep
so he wouldn’t have to go home and have his parents see him
like this. He got jumped in that night to some local gang. We figured
we weren’t going to see him around much anymore
and we were right. There were days we’d see him in passing.
Always in a group. Never alone. Couldn’t help but think about
how dangerous he had seemed now. How oddly safe
that must feel.

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JASON BAYANI is the author of "Amulet" from Write Bloody Press. He's an MFA grad from Saint Mary's College, a Kundiman fellow, and is currently the program manager for Kearny Street Workshop, the longest running multi-disciplinary Asian Pacific American arts org in the country.

www.jasonbayani.com
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