Smile

Your smile is the only thing that fakes your age;

The rest of you shines in its place

Unseen in those old photographs.

There is a time, you said,

to put away your toys.

You swore, you crossed your heart:

clean laundry; washed dishes; graduation photos.

Your mother came knocking

and we were doing somersaults in the garden.

You will: we all leave some day

to find ourselves space enough to live.

Will you look back? When you do?

Ah—even my dumb scatterbrain heart

knows that it was too hot to touch                                                        

when you picked it up.

Your fingers are still tender.

Time will be the only thing that forgives us;

Don’t worry, don’t look back—

Just smile a new smile

For this time, for this camera.

Sweeter

You put sugar in your coffee;

You mix your beer with Sprite:

The long sliver of sweetness twists

through the sliding taste on your tongue.

You do not walk without an umbrella;

you have never forgot—

afraid of what might not know you,

beating down your shape in the rain.

Ah, the days, they sweat for you;

the years all languish.

They measure the miles travelled

by your eyes, looking away.

They will hold the skies for you;

waiting until you steady yourself,

and taste the whole bitterness

that lies quietly in your cup.

To Me

I

Desert

I have not taken water today.

My tongue is swollen,

My throat parched.

My body is a desert.

But impossibly, these tears do not run dry.

They roll on, large, and heavy

salting this grieving earth

as if this were a fertile land

only now in ruin.

 

II

Poison

I have been found corrupt, a trickster.

The world dripped its venom on me;

and I writhed beneath that serpent.

When you arrived,

you caught the poison in a glass.

In time the ache will grow weaker,

And with every drop I quake a little less;

but you are still gone—

there was no one to hold a glass for you

to catch the poison that dripped from me.

III

Autumn

Only this season reeks of decay.

In winter it is buried;

in spring we wipe ourselves clean.

I am not lost, not yet. Please—

let me bury it;

let me wash it from my skin.