His messages were often subtle.

He’d hide vinyl copies of Blind Melon

beneath our painkillers like Easter eggs.

He’d blast “No Rain”

like a siren while flying

down the interstate

and I pretended to sleep

with my earbuds in and forehead flattened

white against the frost-black window.

Tonight the hard clouds hiss, and 8-bit snakes

hang from the neon cedar branches.

I play his vinyl like an obituary

to the fetal birds that will ascend

and sew him to the waxing moonlight.