You were my friend.
I was the only one at your funeral,
You didn’t have many friends.

I buried you myself,
In my own backyard.

I loved you so much!
I love you still.
I love you so much I wrote this poem for you.

Taken so soon,
It ***** you don’t live as long as we do.
I hope heaven is kind to you

I will never forget you!
You were there when I needed you!
I was there when you needed me too!
But now you’re gone.

I will join you again one day my friend,
But until then,
You can eat all the carrots that you want,
Hop around in all the fields that you want.
And when I arrive,
We can eat all the carrots that we want,
We can hop around all the fields that we want.

May you rest in peace.

Wimbledon’s playing on the TV in the living room. Dad and I are watching on the sofa.

In the kitchen, Mom cuts carrots and cucumbers with a long blade. She slices the vegetables one by one. Orange pieces. Green pieces.

I glance over Mom chops up the carrots and cucumbers without a cutting board, taking each long carrot and cucumber and slices it with precision, as though she’s a professional like the film with Natalie Portman and Jean Reno.

But she’s not a little girl and she’s not a Frenchman. She’s like a mix-in-between, like the asphalt in our driveway and the grass sprouting in between the cracks.

Dad is a computer engineer. He used to be an artist. Used to study technical drawing in a university in Saigon.

He met mom when he was working on a play. She was the lead actress. Shakespeare had said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”

He’s right, but right now I can’t tell what act I’m in. Dad focuses on the TV. Watches Federer and Djokovic, his eyes, darting from left to right like the mood of a young boy that crosses back and forth from light to dark, and back again.

Blade in hand, Mom makes longer and deeper cuts across the cucumber, cutting away the skin, leaving deep cuts in the vegetable. Dad turns his head towards her, his neck cracking like the forehand swung by Federer.

He clears his throat, softly, soft as gas leaking out from a stovetop from a studio apartment, like the scene in Fight Club, a match about to be struck.

Mom sets the blade down on the table, and bites her lip. Her nostrils flare. I press down on the couch arm, and stand up, my head bent, my eyes wandering to the doorway.

When I was a child,
I fondly remember
eating carrots from 
the dirt of our garden.

My brother, my sister, and I
would pull the carrots,
with great care, from
the dirt of our garden.

We would wash them
sometimes in the sink,
sometimes with the hose,
to remove the dirt of our garden.

But even then
as we chewed those carrots
we could still sometimes taste
the dirt of our garden.

My eyes are drawn toward your toes
as frequently as lover’s eyes
do meet and tie their souls in knots.

Your toes that grasp and stretch and lift
you up to reach the chocolate chips
you keep behind the chia seeds.

Your toes that press and push and dig
into dirt and earth then sheets at 3
when warm air beckons— take a nap

my eyes are drawn toward your toes
and glide over freckled skin that makes
me scramble after memories,

past parted lips and perfect cheeks
to lurid pools of cerulean
that find us back in bed by noon.

Must be from France , western European .
Dedicated equestrian , painter and poet .
Aristocratic by blood , proper family .
Well educated in all the facets of life .

Regal as the diamond jewels of the tiara worn like a crown .

Long black hair waterfalls over her shoulders .
Rose red lips that beg to be kissed .
Perfectly structured cheeks
And the round innocent eyes
Of an angel seeking wings to fly .

And if the eyes are the windows to the soul let my ship sail on in
Seeking safe harbor within
Sneha's eyes .

there is something beautiful about a memory
that reaches from the pit of your stomach
latches onto your heart
and pulls it under your lungs
placing you in a moment
that once saturated the marrow of your bones

when you close your eyes you can
feel, see, and be just as it was
with carrots, a park bench, the night sky,
a bottle of spanish wine
and his arms cradling you against
the chilling wind

it takes you so deeply into
the inscription he carelessly carved
across the back of your eyes that
when you open them again and exhale
you find it fogging the midsummer air
releasing the very breaths you took
by his side