you in a classroom collared shirt and pressed pants class pet is a pair of overalls on a coconut octopus
a short novel rolled up in your palm a cigar of words you bring to your lips twice a day lunch break and as the busses pull away
I, in the desk drawer, hear your pen skate across pages the purr of a highlighter the swoop in red ink
an opus is blooming between old postit notes each one beginning with the sound of the subway passing above and how it echoes onto the dirty alleyway and back up into Chicago sky
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these days are a haze on a wooden cutting board passing sweet potatoes, peppers, onions all diminished to cubes
and of wiping down cupboard doors before fingerprints even have time to adhere before sauce slips down like raindrops on car windows across town in the dark
these days he cries with his mouth wide open and the scream I swallowed last week feels as though it slips away, a bubble of gas hammering an intestine until it reabsorbs and forgets itself
anger fades back into fat muscle fades back into fat pizza and fried chicken and ice cream blended by teeth with bleeding gums and it all goes back to fat
in a blaze of smoke and oil the potatoes find crisp edges I find the crisp air of autumn and he finds a crisp apple skin wedged between two front teeth
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transmission across sidewalks that come just up to the grass like snails picked up on dry days passing fried worms and beaming up weeds
shine peeking around leaf ends flaunting dark stems veins like gold and photosynthesis like diamonds if you have seen spinach breathe in a glass you have seen a diver surfacing with hands heavy with conch shells and abalone
you have seen kites dive and be reborn to worship streaks of clouds like rows to plant seeds in blue fields
someone is waiting on the bench just out of sight around the corner you feel their breath ricochet off aspen trunks you remember it close on your chin your chest calls them before your throat does
they stand up and step deftly around the snails and worms that gather beneath them and the sun dims briefly behind a small shoot
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the vase along a bend in the Camino bone dry and painted with the yellow arrow holds more pages of literature than my dessicated tongue
and still strands of hair hold symphonies like the train of stars in the dawn sky before light gave me seconds of dreams of cats peering out windows and a warm handshake to end this earth as we board the bus out of here
when you step early fall out of a quiet heated car onto asphalt lining the side of a mountain stretches before dawn there is a lush sound to the high wind through the weakening leaves
I hope it is the sound that death brings as it promises the sun will rise after effort and hours
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the threads marking the plaid left imprints on my cheeks clear as the ticking from the next room visceral as the bend pop in the sink from the hot water
quiet front rooms meant adults wandered outside so I shadowed down hallways lit by slanted afternoon to grandma's bedroom where must rose from white lace blankets and all the books were romance books
do you think she noticed when one went missing?I slipped it nameless between library books I returned one Wednesday after school to let someone else deal with it and somehow heard the echo of the clock tocks in the morning and mustard-stained shirts me curled up without a blanket on the sofa chair with the raised plaid pattern that marked my cheeks
that marked my cheeks
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dropping off jackets in a midwinter snow fight felt like showing you are invincible cold can't touch us when we are laughing red cheeked together
dropping off jackets unordered to the hooks in the mud room with the light off but mom said she started a fire in the fireplace and we mix batches of box brownies just before midnight to feel invincible time can't reach us when we are young bright eyed together
where are these soft corners and places to lay our jackets now how can it feel like laying my jacket on a guest room bed amid stale geese and sea themed knick knacks how can it feel like all the wrong keys to the door
I birth the next round of invincible as I lose calcium in my teeth and find it harder to loosen my back when I wake
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a man with round glasses a collared shirt and a backpack looked straight at Henry and asked him where he had gotten that book and how old he was and as the doors closed behind us afterward I realized again it was you
like the old man who recognized me as a teacher when my hand lingered on his woodworked school model who remembered his mother in the field though she was long gone in this summer sun
like the old man named Anton who sang songs he liked into the night, the contrast to the young girls who sang songs others liked into the candlelight who shared morning bread and chocolate with me who shares lunch bread and meat and cheese with me who let me go with a gruff smile when I started feeling indebted and responsible for him and I wandered between hay bales with guilty tears on my lashes
like the old woman on the bus who passes a piece of candy and tells me the Japanese would not let her speak in school
History flies close so close I could touch it and I pretend you have sent it because I can not hear anything new
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