My mother dropped me,
At 7 months into the low-end of our backyard pool and
Watched my tiny legs kick to safety,
My two doughy hands reaching to hers
Now, years later, I see myself
Standing at the edge of the glary water,
Trusting my own heaviness, I let myself fall
In reply, cold water slaps
Against my back and is mixed with some fluid in the eyes,
Until my feet touch the ground and my hands reach for nothing
And I didn’t pass on much,
At 15, I gathered all things on my naïve list,
Stirred it with lemonade and
I was stepping in the tunnel
It was dark at first, very
I think I expected it, I welcomed it as one of the footnotes in the Oxford definition of “life”
New faces swimming in my eye every time I blink, radio playing brand new songs
And strangers who hum along
Out of them, some faces reminds me of my childhood friends with whom I made mud castles,
They are wearing pretty dandelion shaped masks
I like them
Not always the lemonade turn out to be too sour,
The masks were sugar and
The tunnel, it was still dark
Until I felt some warm shimmering thing on my lips
Like me, he was the sun
It was so beautiful that all his atoms hum at different frequency
We rearranged each other
The pen I pick was now my love so was he
The dog, the coffee, the breezy winter
We had it all, under our eye lids
He clasped my cold hands, pulled till half of them glistened with the kiss of sun
And my body became his new color palette
It was late October, and we’d just finish another song
No, we didn’t fight, you just smashed your phone against the windshield
The very next date, I’d capture you in my camera on the highway scenic overlook, hands up,
Like you’re holding the sun
We were on a roll, darling
It started to rain in the middle of summer,
No presents that Christmas
Before I could start romanticizing heartache,
My eyes, treacherous eyes, once again wide open,
I was in the tunnel,
It is still dark
