Whatever Comes Next — By Grace Dilger

artwork by Sonia Redfern

For Ryan

I buy the white candles     I never buy

Usually yellow     usually green

A man is getting      Brillo pads

A boy enchanted     by Haribo     worms

What all     bad      can happen      in your good suit?

What      happened?     Where are     you?

At Spring Portents     you boomed and beamed

Cajoled the audience      of which you were apart   

To call     their reps     you laughed      and clapped

Waded into the thick     delight       of verse

A warm bog     of commiseration

Nikki broke out     a throwback     a familiar alias

From the bathtub      shotgun     years

When we were forging     community in a wicker  Instapot

Afterwards I was proud      to have impressed you

Spoke     of our wheel     as you were

A boy took your     breath     from you     in your good suit

You with your hair      like a deep conditioned    improvised

     Explosive device  

I thought you’d live     man with hydrangea on head

With the soft     slide to your words like the    Everests

Inflated for babies     on our blocks     in summer

Everytime a Narragansett     is crushed

A dead     poet     gets their      wings

You made me a better     socialist

On the candy     heart     of comradeship

I’m sorry     you’re dead      and there’s a video     of it

Your last terror     stricken moments     Googleable for loved

Ones     I don’t watch     though I imagine

it’s like clips of cranes     collapsing    parking garages  

reduced      to dust     the sudden     drop     of the balcony    

out      from under     the innocent

Comment section     some twisted symposium

Searching for your     obit    I can’t avoid     a still

Of you      running     for your life     then crumpled

As bougainvillea petals     in the infancy    of morning

I wish     your bus      had come     that it’d shuttled

You and your love     home safely     amongst blaring

Headphones     crunching chips     sleeping nurses

That your hands met     amidst the slight rock    

Of this battery-electric     boat at sea     eyes closing

You’d overshot it     a block     but didn’t mind     one last

Gulp     of early Autumn     dawn     after dancing and toasting

The long life ahead     of the newlyweds     that the radiant

Heat of such     nights     could swathe     you    in an unassailable

Cloak of tomorrows     you’d      wake to

I wish your bus came     and you got on it

There were     plenty of seats     and it didn’t smell like piss

The driver     noting your Sunday best     smiles a     canyon

Says     don’t you look nice?

Grace Dilger is a poet and educator. Her work has most recently appeared in The McNeese Review, Barzakh, The Nonbinary Review, and The Bangalore Review. She received her MFA from Stony Brook University and teaches at Monroe University.