off the golden gate
knowing they'd meet again
somewhere
maybe in hell
maybe in a movie
or maybe in a book
like thelma and louise
they were outlaws
but just hadn't broken
any laws yet
except the unwritten law
which says
you must be good girls
you must be bland girls
you must be
life support systems
for the only thing you own
that really matters
and so they jumped
off the golden gate
leaving giant bras
and licorice cats
and fountain pens
and plastic dishes
and old old dolls
and mountains
of things behind them
their legacy of things collected
piled up around them
as the emptiness stayed
inside them...
* * * * * * *
Back in 2002, my friend Linda Sue,
who lives at the opposite end of
the country, and I exchanged a ton
of emails, playing with poetry, testing
our wings. We both bought and sold
things on ebay, like the things mentioned
in the poem and we were both inveterate
collectors of all manner of junk! Neither one
of us ever intended real suicide.
