Jealousy
by Courtney McEunn
The stars shine brighter
on the bad nights.
As if they know.
As if they can hear me
sobbing
in the driver’s seat
of my little sedan
parked at the intersection
where a local girl died.
Hit & run.
Her cross still stands dirty and chipped
against the splintering electrical pole.
I get out of my car and look up.
The blinding white stars mock me
because I’m alive and she isn’t.
They know I wish it were reverse.
They laugh at me, trapped in this life,
knowing I’m not brave enough to end it myself.
Crimson droplets form on my wrist, moonlight
reflects off tears that steadily fall down my face.
My mother’s face
when she found out she was pregnant at seventeen
in a town where people find cigarettes lying on dirt roads
and smoke them.
A town of corner store pill dealers and methheads
living in the trailer next door.
The town in which I was born
out of wedlock, to a couple of teenagers.
They were going to get out of town.
They were going to go to college.
Surprise!
I lay in the grass next to the cross,
looking at the little dipper and wondering
if there really was a heaven,
if there really was a God.
If there was, He should’ve taken me.
She was seventeen, too.
Probably wanted to get out of town.
Probably wanted to go to college.
I am jealous of a dead girl.
Eventually I raise myself up,
Cover my wrist and climb back into my car.
I drive home in silence.
I ruined my parents’ life once,
I can’t do it again.
