I did not know him long, nor well enough
to be called his friend, but I ran with him enough times
to at the very least say I knew him--- his girlfriend's name,
what teachers he liked, which of the runners he disliked.
So that year, the year John was reported missing,
like many people at our school, I wore a yellow ribbon on my jacket.

Yellow ribbons were hung from trees, streetlamps, and doors,
emblems that every teacher, every student wore.
We walked beneath them in the halls, under them in doorways,
John's disappearance on every branch that held a ribbon,
pinned on every shirt on which a yellow ribbon was worn.
We were told to move past it. But we paused at times,
for fifteen minute assemblies to hope for his return.

The yellow ribbon, I was told, was to represent hope,
John's safe return. Others said it was to remember.
I wore the yellow ribbon for none of these reasons.
I hoped only to somehow delay the coming of that clear,
cold, December day when yellow turned to black,
and two road workers found his body,
in a culvert, beneath an underpass.

And that day, the last one of the year,
Was also the last I wore it, and what it had become:
Frayed at its ends, creased in the middle, from months of wear
I laid it to rest in my dresser drawer beneath my mirror.