I walk past the old woman
who wears unflattering red lipstick,
vivid as cartoon blood,
and jeweled chopsticks in her hair.
We meet haunted eyes,
full of defiant sorrows.

The pudgy little girl streaks past,
pigtails askew, sandals mismatched
by herself or a harried mother
she is either running to, or away from.

The boy with the closed face,
like a letter that no one opens
for fear of what it might hold,
reaches for the same book I am reaching for.
We smile at one another, surprised.

Such small things bring recognition.
We are the same inside.

You followed sweet temptation over the edge
into the dark, warm water.
You tried to climb my body to save yourself.
Even once you had been lifted out,
damp and shaking and frightened
you swooped down
on that bloated, abandoned mass
of oatmeal and raisins
and gulped it down with the frantic abandon
of a dog that has just ****** in the face of death.

Damp on pavement.
Droplets in grass.
Reality enameled
with dark quicksilver.

A girl with worn galoshes,
raincoat full of faded flowers,
stomps through the mud,
green rising lush around her,
forest on all sides.

She’s gone out into the world alone.
Every rubbery step rings
like a gunshot in her ears.
Rain fills her eyes.

There is a playground here,
abandoned for years,
or perhaps drawn
out of memories
and set here to lure her.


The paint peels from the slide.
The swings are rusty.
The sandbox is a square of dull mud.

The days of dandelions are long ago.  
The days of laughing friends have ended.

In the sunlight, that sandbox would gleam
with a thousand tiny diamonds.
This whimsical, illusory wealth
would call to her, fill her with
breathless wonder.

Beneath this rain,
the girl she was has drowned.