Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright

Our past is an overplayed VHS tape:
white-line threads, your hair blooming
far too red. In college, we made movie
magic, a dizzy montage of eraser fights,
stalking suits and mewing in trees
at the unsuspecting. Laughing, we fools,
always. Tapping at soundproof glass
to make friends gasp on-air. You starred
in my class projects, helped plan
happenings: mock protests, mass
silliness. Even years later, your neat
letters, vivid scenes of us,
dancing like children. You in fuchsia,
a bridesmaid with wild curls
at my first wedding. But then, you

deleted yourself. My letters
returned, calls unanswered. I'd missed
some subtext — a shadowy figure, or
subtle signal — viewed by other
audiences. Was it your growing
sports yen, a need for wheels?
The BMXer you dated who
hated my brown boyfriend? Did I
love you too much? Oh,

sister, how I miss you. In dreams,
our arms intertwine and we float
through celestial
special effects. In dreams,
you explain how softly
silence grew: an accident, you say,
the rest warbly, lost. I've cobbled
together our director's
cut: with a soundtrack
on reel-to-reel, using a china pencil
and razor blade. Blue tape
fastens the angled cuts. But our
future is a bad
edit, an abrupt
shift to leader.

This poem has been a long time coming. I was a broadcast-cable major in college, and one of my best friends, an English major, worked at the college radio station with me. Now, we live in the same city but haven't spoken for years, as this poem explains. I did some free writing and then sat down at the computer, listening to iTunes, and wrote this.