(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 5, 2018)

We are seven, Marla and me,
standing on a corner street in the labyrinth
of neighborhoods off Juan Tabo.
We are the edge of town

and Marla is crying, in trouble maybe
because we scratch salty words on sidewalks
with chalky New Mexico rocks

or maybe because we’re negotiating
all the rights and privileges of the tag BFF,
only forever will only last a few more months
before my family moves to Missouri
and nevermore stretches out
like diverging roads on a map,

or maybe because we will subsequently grow up
and find ourselves in the middle of it.

In any case, Marla is spilling tears
and I am fervently trying to make the case,
the very hairbrained case,
that tears are a limited resource
and one wouldn’t want them to “run out.”

Today, forty years later, I would like to circle back
to that corner in the crook of Juan Tabo and Highway 40
where we were standing at the edge of it.

I have an amendment to make;
and if I had a dime for every bad idea I’ve ever had,
this one would be framed because it was the first.

I would say, “Marla, tears are bountiful.
You can have as much as you want,
as much as you can stand.
They’re just about the only precious thing
you will never run out of, be at a loss for, find yourself bereft of.

They are endless.
They are bottomless.
And they will make you who you are."