IF I’D HAVE DIED ON THAT GARAGE ROOF IN 2016 (WHAT HAPPENS TO A DREAM DEFERRED?)

my skin would’ve sizzled against the gentle touch of the power-line / sinoatrial node overloaded with current / my heart fibrillated for seven glorious seconds until my limp body rolled off the roof into my neighbor’s backyard / they’d’ve wrapped me in a quilt and said a prayer / a bloodless death that is mine alone / i’d have been the youngest in the morgue that night / dead boy in an icebox of the unfortunate / splayed on an autopsy table they’d take inventory of my insides / heart liver hunger brain lung guilt gallbladder pain kidney uterus / skin charred before it had the chance to be loved / buried before i grew old enough to bleed / virgin angel daughter lowered into the ground without ceremony / tombstone etched with a name now foreign / six feet away from becoming