She handed me a mirrored butcher knife.
Then came the noon chucks, a fifth of Vodka.
My hair was still wrapped in the French braid
knotted with her strong fingers the day before
while I was teaching my high school English class.
She had removed her long red nails, told me she
Planned to shank her mother in the back that day
so I drove her far into the desert after school.
We hiked a mountain behind an old cattle ranch.
I fingered the splintered cross stuck in rocks,
my initials carved at 14 with my brother's knife.
It had been many years since I'd last been here.
I could still see my parents' house, wondered
how easy it would be for one of us to slip and fall.
At school, she had confided in her journal to me
that she once threw a desk at a mean teacher,
that she'd lived in a crack house South Central LA,
that she'd already had four abortions, many dads.
I wanted to give her a gift-- a bleached coyote skull,
maybe the rattle or papery skin of a dead snake,
a bracelet of rusty barbed wire from the corral,
a memento of the school year we spent together.
Instead, she carved her gang name on the cross,
told me that she wanted to fix hair for the dead.
dedicated to Shivonne from Goodwill HS, Victorville CA
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