Are You Religious?
He drove to a secluded lake before dawn.
Death by carbon monoxide.
Only nineteen.
I remember one day he, his brother, their parents,
and I rode past University Baptist.
He said the people there are brainwashed.
His mother found religion after he died.
She and his father divorced.
His father, a writer, moved north,
found a university job, and remarried.
While they were together but apart,
I began to notice her
long blonde hair, hourglass curves.
One day I phoned her
and told her not to come to my place.
I screwed that up.
I got my MFA and left that college town.
Years later, she stopped texting
when she found out I lived with a woman.
It wasn’t proper I was texting her.
Single, retired,
she has grandchildren, a lake house
she goes to when not in town,
cheering her college basketball team,
which she never did before.