Snow

I miss you like summer
The sky falls without you
here--lonely
little moths--to the ground and lies
in pinions. I kick up their winter
pick up their wings, dim,
the first dusks of their dark:
the dark between our fingers
the space between stars

My roommate is purple and turquoise usually; she likes Kelly Clarkson and basketball. She's dated a boy named Christian for almost one year, and she's loved him all along. Last February, his dad died in an accident at work and she cried for him, picked up his pieces, touched them all and whispered, "live, Christian." 

Her best friend Jess called today, she's gone! Jess's mother died tonight and Jess thinks she will die tonight, and my roommate is driving five-and-a-half hours tonight, and the snow is lonely tonight. 

Her mom had cancer; her death was anticipated, but not so soon, never so soon. I heard Marissa telling Jess at lunchtime, "Everything's gonna be okay alright?" The shock of death hurts me. I felt it when I touched Marissa, held her and let her shake. It stings.

"Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

'Death is swallowed up in victory.'

O death, where is your victory? 

O death, where is your sting?"

1 Corinthians 15