What Remains

We armed ourselves
with sticks, cutting air with
single notes of sharp wind
cracking wild against
his flesh.

We laughed,
rounding the roots,
his shadow
stretching from the branch
he swung from.

We whooped and
hollered words
we split, spit,
sang in chorus with
what we wanted to believe
was silence, was
his smile.

We with cheeks
flecked with rust,
hand-me-down
Prejudices and a
tongue split like
forked Judas.
he dropped.

We made this
a game, now,
a single splinter
burrowing, resting
somewhere between
blood and bone,
blurred under
the layered wrinkles of
white, Summer suns.

Does he remember?