Your sister made Campari
and I hated it
but I drank it
because I was eighteen
and you were twenty-one
and they were older than us
in more ways than one.

I didn’t care for the drinks.
I just cared for the mornings,
waking up to that bird in the dogwood
outside our window,
sometimes next to you.

Though you might’ve been gone already,
slipped away from under the sheets
while I was dreaming of missing my mother.

But I’d find you
I always do
I would hear the clack of the jump rope
 on concrete and look down
  from the porch
   with flaking green and yellow paint

I would yell down, “Hey sexy!”
Sometimes you might choose to hear.
And I would stand there for hours watching you
jump under the dogwood,

thinking that I could do this for a long time.