ray ray is on
facebook
ray ray is on facebook
i found him when i was snooping the other day
i found his sister too
she’s a writer now
of course my first thought was
great…another writer
but there was ray ray on facebook
living a life and hanging out with friends
going to heavy metal shows
taking road trips to visit civil war graves
he’s still playing his guitar
and it looks like he has a master’s degree in latin
it was good to see
that his old man hadn’t destroyed him
like i’d feared for years
because ray ray’s old man
was the scourge of the neighborhood
threatening to kill himself in public
and breaking into the black neighbor’s homes
to spray paint racial epitaphs on their walls
i thought for sure ray ray was in a mental institution
or held captive in his old man’s basement
i don’t know why i started snooping for him at all
usually when i snoop on facebook
it’s for old friends who’ve become religious nutters
or for girls who never gave me the time of day
in grade school or high school
i’m always happy when those women have gotten fat
divorced, work shit jobs, and have about four or five kids
but ray ray was different
he was my friend for a while
we used to play with star wars figures all of the time
we watched star trek
and pretended we were the monkees
he was mike nesmith and i was micky dolenz
my brother was davy jones
we had no peter tork
because ray ray’s sister wouldn’t play a boy
but i bet she can write a mean one now
we were friends until people started telling me
not to be his friend
that ray ray was weird and anti-social with the other kids
he couldn’t play sports
and you had to play sports in my neighborhood
if you wanted to survive
besides his old man was crazy
he chased ray ray’s mother with a butcher knife
and rumor had it that he’d killed a neighbor’s dog years ago
why would you want to spend any time over there?
people would ask me
of course i listened to them
because i was too young to understand
the bonds of friendship
i was too young to defy my parents
and hold back the sway of suggestion from my friends
or even bother to think for myself
i was too young to understand
that ray ray needed someone in his life
me
so i let him go
i sacrificed him to his crazy old man
to the ridicule of the kids on the street
i played baseball and football and basketball
until i couldn’t stand myself
i was the neighbor kid you could say hi too
while ray ray carried umbrellas on sunny days
and talked to himself to drown out the catcalls of the other
kids
and whatever madness his family put in his head
i’ll even admit that i teased him too
but, christ, that was a long time ago
and ray ray is on facebook now
he’s living in memphis and just got a place of his own
he no longer lives with his sister
whose books are sci-fi and fantasy by the way
i wonder if he’s in a band
last night i told my wife
that i found him while snooping on facebook
i told her, ray ray is on facebook
she asked, are you going to email him?
and i just said no
it was enough to know that ray ray is out there
smiling for the camera
happy
and without the need
to be visited by a ghost like me
some dumb neighborhood kid
another blank face full of vicious memories
who could never tear him down.
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