The Notebook

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is standard issue school marble. On the inside cover
            she has listed the names of all her friends killed this year,
so far. A dozen deep, each with a date of birth and death
            not more than twenty years apart. My first thought
is an odd jealousy. White people don’t make memorial
            tee-shirts for their young dead. When I was her
age I made sure no adult in my blast radius noticed when
            someone I loved dissolved in my hands.
There are few things I believe in that I cannot hold.
            One is the promise of the written word.
That which rattles in us like a bullet in a glass jar
            will be silenced if we fill it with our own sound. There is magic
in what locks trauma to page. It is the pull of a splinter
            from under a nail. A show to the small and immediate
world the similarities between all palms. I’m staring
            at the book. She has decided to never throw
herself another birthday party because someone was shot
            at the last one. My feelings on this are irrelevant.
She wants to know what I think of the poem. I tell her
           it’s good, but this line, where you say the funeral felt like
a quiet nightmare, you could get more specific. It should be clear
           to someone who has never been there
exactly what this feels like.