You are brown and eating frozen grapes in the grass: petting the hair of some tattered doll, singing a song I taught you. I try to conjure a face, but all I know is the back of your small head—an afro littered with dandelion residue. You are lucky to be nothing more than a thought...because I don’t know if I could have ever been as good to you as you will never be to me. The exchange between parents and children seems to go this way: you - a wonder; I - everything I hope you never become. A spongy piece of angel food cake, as elusive as love, I would wish you didn’t put your tiny pink tongue, lapping, at our French doors—the dry swipe of play goop on our marble countertops. Maybe we ate avocados and blood oranges together, drank rice milk together; maybe I told you all about your star sign, gave you a nickname like: Mia Amata.
Our talks are never without melody—a miracle, like a thick, forbidden plum in a desolate dream forest; silk in the hallow of a black tree.

I shouldn’t be so sad.
All of the money I’ve earned so far has been my own...
All that is mine remains just, so—every decision made out of lust, habit, or both.