Rites

He sits among the stars

with the night trapped in his hair – his eyes – his

mouth.

This is how we will remember him:

free and entranced by the world,

life and death

held in the balance,

sat with a small group

on the roof.

A puff of smoke leaves

his lips,

dancing up into the crystalline sky of 

breaths,

tearing away into

the trees that seem to protect and trap us

but are held at bay by

the bright glow of red

that darts to his lips and away,

stealing his breath.

Perfect nights, escaping the chaos below,

‘us lot’

isolated on the roof, sat above it all

cloaked in warm laughter and searching 

conversations which can only exist

past midnight.

But we were only caught 

by his beauty, his wit, his

smoke.

When it was just us on the roof,

in the early morning of the next day,

and we sat

overlapping for warmth

he gave me my first taste of tobacco

in the lips

that he pressed against mine,

our shared breath trapped

on that roof.

Then he was lost to us,

to me,

now at rest 

among the stars.

Gone from the roofs that he had once

occupied,

leaving empty spaces where long limbs had sprawled, careless

and confident in life.

When silence hits, we remember him,

set among the stars,

and breathe in his remaining 

smoke.