Weeks since the Day of Valentine
returned,
the gift I’d had for her was
gone.
Twenty dollars, some coins were
tokens of my affection;
or the value of French words strewn across American pulp.
Insipid or otherwise--
was it the action or result I more despised?
An attempt to carve my personality
in totem
out of trees and other people's words.
To my mind it seemed like children’s doodles
on a colored pencil bookmark
that could be
****** immediately
behind a large magnet on your fridge.
But it's lost within those passages, un-deciphered,
never—turned, regardless.
Swallowed in the palms of the bookstore’s proprietor
and regurgitated on its shelf.
My plan, it seemed to be all along;
as in my first dumb year.
First grade, with little since I've learned
from pop-music, plush monkeys in middle school;
vapid loneliness I glean from
years that have been the same.
Young acquaintances have ricocheted,
as phone calls often do;
All imitate the laughing sun,
renounce
the bitter moon.