CHERRY LAUREL

Abbe lived just down a ways,

Seven sisters, each cuter than freckles on a frog.

But Abbe made you look twice,

Hair, long and straight, the color of whiskey,

Fair skinned with eyes like endless sky.

She had outgrown her tomboy ways.

And she was, well she was Abbe.

She sat alone beneath the arching branches,

Abbe’s eyes, welling, red from crying, met mine.

She rolled a tender leaf between her fingers,

Held it to her nose and then to mine.

Sweet like cherries, it smelled like her.

Cherry laurel, she said, poisonous.

That spot of shade in a long hot summer,

Was her escape from the hamster cage.

Abbe and Whoever had made a mistake,

The kind that lands too hard on a girl of sixteen,

That gets you booted from Catholic school.

And she, except for me, could tell no one

Soon to be college boy, Whoever, would never know.

Back then, options were few for a knocked-up teen

Left with no hopes and fewer dreams.

I could drive, had a part time job,

Maybe we could make it work.

There were worse ideas than marriage

But not for Abbe.

As the summer languished

Abbe built a wall of anguish and hid herself away.

Just a moody teen they thought

If they only knew the life she held inside

Was surely taking hers away.

The youngest sister found her, no blood but lifeless,

Beneath the arching cherry laurel.

Which life its poison was intended,

We will never know.

Oh, how much like love its tender leaves.