She Saved the World a Lot

For Elise, who really did.

If I could have one do-over, I’d have vampires
there in vamp-face crouching over

glass and your own slow breaths. You’d be
sired by morning. Fresh-faced as you pluck

asphalt from your elbows, a mug
of blood in your hands.

How strange to think of you outliving me now ––
Thrust into memory just enough so as not to wake it.

This time I’d be there to help you lick the envelopes
on your Seth Green fan-mail (even when I had no idea who Oz was). 

I wonder now if you had to claw into your own heaven.
Did your knuckles ache against the tingle of crabgrass?

I wonder why you can’t come back like Buffy did.

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KAILEY TEDESCO holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University, and she is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee. She is the editor-in-chief at Rag Queen Periodical. You can find her poetry in journals such as FLAPPERHOUSE and Hermeneutic Chaos, and it is forthcoming in Bop Dead City and Menacing Hedge.