Teenagers die hard.
Their youth and power and beauty hang so^ though they will never lead the pack nor graduate.
Their feet will still beat to rap songs and rock songs as they flail at life, flash then dim like stars^their idols; and their cavities fill and their blood counts jump and their muscles fail and their culverts stop forever.
Then most fall silent, have lost the voice to scream: Why me, why me? into the waiting air.
But puberty and death don't lie like lovers together.
And there are some who hang there, some rebels, mutinous, hot, and high on ramparts: See this one: grunting her last gasp behind her lipstick gash behind her O2 mask, her painted fingerpoints entwining flares of light within her boyfriend's fingers.
And this one, who won't die, won't die: bleeding, decaying, defying, demanding one more of our experiments in renewing vital things.
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