There are days when my head
Is full of sawdust
A collection of
Tiny pixel particles that I can’t,
For the life of me,
Sweep up in its entirety
It’s in my eyes, my nose, my mouth
I try to talk but I don’t remember
I fall asleep and hope to wake up completed
Built
Whole
But sometimes
I’m still just
Tiny grains of sawdust
They run to the hills
when I write the cleaning list
They cringe with each stroke
as I assign names
color code respective tasks
and hand it over
If I did not dare
to be specific with them
the house would crumble
Better they mumble
and complain all the day long
than deny virtue
from kids who need a
lesson in “hush and do it”
’cause back in my day…
requires one-thousand-
piece-puzzle eyes & love of
green green—
why not eat the leaves!
ice cubes clink in a glass
gently rip the fabric of time
I’m in an old Chevrolet
where a gang of bullies pass
the bottle around
I must
drink
If I don’t they’ll
pour it down my throat
I never consider
getting out of the car
It doesn’t taste
like birthday cake
unless
it tastes like
wax and smoke,
the drippings and
the drifting,
the wishes soaked
into icing
like an echo.
Did I ever tell you about the day
I got stopped by the fashion police
for wearing white socks
with sandals after Labor day?
They let me off with a warning.
I used to lay in the forest
staring through the trees
listening to them creak
and strain in the wind
and pretend I was
in the northwest
not this place
with the history
that I didn’t want
with the people
that didn’t want me
who played along
and it left the food
tasting sour
and I love you
was like licking
the inside of a
metal can of sauerkraut
but here I am
still finding places
to look up
and wishing
I would
have burned
all that history
a long time ago
maybe those people
that I’ve ruined
on running
wouldn’t carry
that scent of
death and fear
that seemed to
permeate
that
hollow
An old man with broken teeth
sits on the house steps
where he spits and sputters
hurling invectives
at no one in particular
I try to ignore him,
walk carefully past, keys
in hand just in case.
He is mostly a nuisance,
but sometimes, especially at night,
he lashes out, his talon fingers
scratching at the moon,
shrieking my name.
And yet another postcard, this one of Paris. A winter scene, the Seine with a graceful cantilever bridge, the Eiffel Tower rising from the distant mist while closer trees are perfect half-snow curves. An image copyrighted the year you entered this world.
The last one before this showed bison in a snow-blanketed Yellowstone. It was taken the year after you met. The message was brief, one of his puns. Have you herd I love you?
Others have come at random intervals, the scenes mostly foreign and undated. A man and woman, their dogs’ leashes tangled, the feeling they’re strangers or estranged friends. One of a church. We could have been married here. So many winter settings. Not surprising. But why so many of Paris, a place you’ve neither ever been, together or apart?
Do you foolishly save these in a box buried deep in your closet, hidden like your heart? Perhaps you throw them out, the read and unread; maybe you taunt your husband by letting them lie about. What would happen if you answered?
