my best friend at five
lived in a blue house
between the orca-backed hill of my home
and the gating grate of some stranger’s fence
with bear-shaped dogs for filling.

             robin’s eggs
             on the scuffed concrete,
             back then,
             were the wildest treasure.

             they aren’t a color
             you can hold anymore.

             my friend said he’d fallen in love
             like a cartoon, hearts for eyes,
             but i believed in catfish from the creek,
             ravens built like gargoyles,
             how many pillbugs can curl with the lift of a single stone.
             what can you even see
             when you say such filmy things?
             five years old, all you know is being hit with light and wonder and chewed-up tennis balls,
             yet you think you can leave me like that?

those dogs would bark like demons were itching their throats.
i thought today of all the years they have been dead.