Better to die on my feet...

         than on my knees.

I put the baby in the stroller every week
so she can see her mother
not a body,
but a tree slowly growing above the headstone,
it's branches stretching and crackling in the breeze.
The baby looks at the tree and coos, because she can still smell
her perfume settled on the leaves,
the leaves that rustle
and barely cover her whispered laugh.
The first week it started raining, so I couldn't see her tears,
and she couldn't see mine,
rolling down, down, back to the earth.
I put this baby in the stroller every week
to visit her mother,
knowing she hasn't let her go.

the coffee was cold.
a day old.
i heated it.
poured it.
fought through it.

put on a b-film.
something about crap
films made our lives
feel more fulfilling.

we laughed.
exposed every flaw.
we held hands.
snuck
loving glances.

i have to wake up in three
hours, but all i can think
is life is luck,
even for the dumbest of us,
when you tell your
eyes to open up.

I.  In the past you were stale and sticky like old beer and I could not peel your hands from my hips.  I know I couldn't look at you when you kissed me, but neither could I close my eyes.

II.  Sometimes now you are a black hole that pulls me in at the top of the steps.  Your shirt is two sizes too big and my hands pull it close around your waist, calming the air and closing a vacuum.

III.  When you put your knuckles to your mouth to laugh, when your sleeves are rolled up just above your elbows, music is peeking out of your corners like light under a doorway and your eyes are a robin's egg on the sidewalk, cracked open to spill a feeling that has no name or ending.

There was nothing plastic
About the way your smile showed
Or about the way your arms felt
But a voice in the back of my head told me so
And last weekend
I melted a carpet I thought was wool
You could have fooled me
Except now there is a hard, shiny, iron-shaped mark
Plastered into the carpet's soft mat
To be honest, I was a little disgusted
When I pulled the iron away and found
Strings of green and red clinging to it like bubblegum
And to be honest, I felt a little disgusted with myself
Not to mention you
When I left a handprint in your soft back
And strings of skin still sticking to my palm
Prove you, my little plastic boy, are just a doll
By all the tests that matter
A human illusion too easily destroyed
By an excess of warmth