Exit 6B, just over the Chatahoochee River
Sixteen minutes until midnight
there's nothing on the radio.
Driving home from this winter's
timeshare in the fourth circle of Hell.
All I want is a coffee

or to curl up in bed, cover my head
with the plush blanket.
To sleep and
not wake up until 3 PM,
when the afternoon sun has past its prime.

I see a cross on the shoulder
of the highway,
covered in roses and teddy bears
and my stomach freezes.
Someone died there.
I never thought about it before, but
Jesus Christ, someone died there.

This car has probably passed those rose-covered crosses
a thousand times, without chills
or acid rising in the throat.
And I know it's not his cross,
this boy who I grew up with.
He wasn't even in the country
(let alone on Georgia 400)
when he died.

We were never told the full story,
those of us who grew up in that classroom.
Our parents threw us together every Sunday,
hoped that we learned something.
Wasn't it ironic, then,
that they kept the facts from us?

He was always the asshole.
I hate to think it, but he was.
His blond bowl cut obscured his eyes
which I just knew were laughing at me.
He was the seven-year-old with the runny nose.
The ten-year-old who smelled.
The thirteen-year-old who mumbled through his Bar Mitzvah.
And now, the twenty-year-old, first to die out of all of us.

As the car slides into the garage,
I wonder,
can I sleep long enough to forget.