Invisible Death

helpless and fragile with broken lungs,
no one to console,
a guardian angel asleep at the wheel,
your life so brief, it's only a footnote.
i remember little things in blurry scenes,
it was so long ago, when you had to leave.

memories play to their own tune.
yours is out of sequence, faded, and worn.
i wonder sometimes if you'd be fearless,
you never were afraid when others were.
but we are here today and you sing with the angels.
is it too high a price to pay, to live with what could have been?

i don't think we'd still be friends.
maybe a cursory connection through a facebook trend,
but i'm haunted to this day.
you were never coming out to play again.
boucing on old mattresses in meemaw's backyard.
laughing like crazy when we fell down.

i was a kid too,
unable to process death.
is that why i remain so affected by it?
i never thought i was invincible.
one too many funerals i've went too before i was ten.
life folds, bends then breaks apart at the end.
i look at myself in the mirror
and ponder how much time is left in my hour glass.

i shouldn't miss what never came to be.
is it the crazy in me that wants to get lost,
switch back to a time when i could just be
and death was invisible to me?
i think i'd be a different human being,
if i hadn't had to bury my innocence so soon.