Souvenir/To Remember

Je me souviens innocence, but not what it feels like anymore.
Just that first french kiss, enough to do my childhood in.

Tu te souviens buying your first bra.
Unsure of whether to wear it or not.
Confused about the clasp and all its pregnant meaning.

Il se souvient collecting kisses blown from his mother.
Storing them in mason jars covered in stickers.

Elle se souvient picking watermelon from her daddy's garden.
Rolling them inside when they weighed more than her.

Nous nous souvenons keeping secrets from our loved ones.
Waiting for God to punish us.
Living with the guilt that followed.

Vous vous souvenez a time when the appendix was not just vestigial.
Remember a time when you did more than med school.

Ils se souviennent the night they met.
On a segregated 8th grade dance floor.
Their cheeks red from all that not asking.

Mine are grapefruit halves
Bitter
Salted
Easing the transition into awake
Perfect juicy handfuls
But I know girls with cantalopes
Seems to me you'd need a map
To navigate those
And hands like
Melonballers just to make an impression
Raspberry, Blackberry, Cherry *******
A fruit salad of peaches
And mangoes and apples
It's a world made for peelers
And paring knives
I world where a sweet tooth
Can thrive

We plant our women in orchards
Cultivate them in careful
Organized rows
With expert farmers and the latest fertilizers
Leading them on
Into ripeness
Harvested at just the right time
So that no man ever need know hunger

Imagine having daughters
Trying to let them know
You trust them
Enough to let them make their own ruinous decisions
While keeping them close enough
So that the world doesn't
Touch them
Inappropriately
Imagine having daughters
Like small incisions in the heart

Killed himself when Thomas Edison beat him to the punch
And went down in history as nothing much
More than an obituary

He was the best hide and seek
Player in the
Second grade
There were whispers
Rumors
He could beat the 5th and 6th
Graders
Nothing was ever lost to him
But time spent
And that was worth it

I hid and
When he found me I told all his classmates that he had stolen my lunch money.

"I would like to see the world someday,"
He said