My dear, this dust (was laid among your feet)
Could rarely deemed a framework, period, be.
The oversaturated concrete wept
A foundation of partial tensile failure,
But all good construction, the kind that lasts
Through generations, if we get so far,
At first begins with measured demolition.
The night she told me, first, I saw your eyes.
Bespeckled hazel tones, Morrocan sand
Surrounded by an oasis of hers,
While piercing, mortally, like mostly mine.
She kissed me, fast, your lips were pursed in jest
Of eating sour citrus from my cup,
A year ago, or maybe more or less;
I wish my—I…I wish my penance could
Have been just leaving her, your tiny fingers,
The pain (I felt you almost letting go).
Instead I let it linger through a month,
Before I smelled your hair enough to grasp
At anything that kept your dimpled cheek
From disappearing altogether. Lost
Were any indications I was making
An errant brushstroke, off enough to mask
The lilting of your laugh I heard in hers
When she, and somewhere you, were in my arms
The second day, whose morning I began
The final iteratation of myself,
(But first I’d have to smother my creation).
At least attempt to prove I was deserving,
And cast my empty bottles at his toes.
I felt your lips anoint my forehead, then
She sang me twinkle while I dug my bed.
For years I tried to find the truest pitch,
and kept myself, barefoot, to busk my way
The forty-five it takes to Rotterdam.
The Epping has a stop somewhere in Rhodes; Colossus I am not, though I was saved,
By one who had some overlap of lives
When I was just a boy, and you a fish,
Or maybe more a frog, but I digress,
And simultaneously am vaulting steps…
I suddenly can’t recall how it went.
But you were there, a tangible and tangled
Knot of brain, and not of curly hair,
Though curly is an understatement now,
Before you started, naked (head at least)
Like me, and though I know it’s not the only
Variable that will keep us tied,
I hope reflections have a purposed edge
That you may shed the blights of bananas,
And learn they aren’t the only bruises left
Without the texture issue that persists,
Along with tastes and hates (that don’t exist).
And may you, like the Celtic queen who bore
You, up until we found the hull was breach,
At which point, we ascended to your whim,
Decide your worth is more than trinitite;
You will not need some blast to cut or facet
The mineral, or stone, you will become.
Should tarnish, rust, or Phoenixville alum
Find themselves at threshold out and in,
We’ll ask your mum the applicable laser,
And char them from your orbit, evermore.