Dominic Adam Dixon
(January 30, 1990–August 28, 2011)
Locks like still rows of wheat.
Skin, rich, even, like mud pies
kids pat out with stubby,
uncoordinated fingers & palms.
His nose, unsunk & prominent
like a lynching tree
whose limbs decline to
fail under a body’s worth
of weight. Those lips, darkened,
full as the smoke which rose
slow from them, wrapped
itself into the sky. The suit—
I hated the suit; it was far too still
for a resting person. No one
sleeps in suits. Or boxes.
Copyright © 2015 by Melanie Henderson. Used with permission of the author.