For the Optimist

with a postcard of the sun. Suppose there's nothing that can't be killed. Suppose silence is a weapon, is a constant chipping away. Suppose it's like cancer. That I asked you once because you were the smartest person I knew.

And with your temperate smile, you gave me no answer.


***

For the Letter

that you folded and unfolded until it tore at its creases. For the words you carried with you in a rainstorm, the way they stained the pocket of your favorite shirt. The one you never washed again. And still, you waited. You reached for the paper, divined the blurs. See you soon, she wrote.

See you soon.

***

For Serenity: Blind and Deaf

and yet, you did turn to the roses.

When the butterfly rested on your shoulder, you stopped your hands from flapping. You quieted your off-kilter crying. And in its flying away, you lifted your arms to the sky.

And you did smile.

***

For Love

with its carousel circles, its small-hand I am. That when we blinked, it was already past. Was a lingering echo of something that happened so very long ago. Like the light from a falling star. Like childhood. That good. That fast.

***

For Hopscotch

and butterscotch and things lifted from the liquor cabinet. For amber in a heavy glass and Amber in her grown-up shoes, a cigarette leaning from her red, red lips. That, when you left, you left so many spaces. So many scents attached to you but they are not you. Eighteen and she doesn't remember whether they ever really were.

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