We are born polka-dots
Light pink spots for toes and cheeks.
Weeks of cribs and dangling shapes
Leave us spinning like pinwheels,
We feel breeze and bugs crawling,
Sunshine and hugs, and sprawling out,
We spread our colors around
Giggle sounds, as beach balls,
Tapped by older, happy hands, we float
Down to a perch among the shrubs,
Our shiny surface rubbed by flowers as we sit as garden globes
Until we grow continents and oceans
And are set in motion like the earth itself
In a room inside until our spinning charade
Squeezes and fades us into a single pushpin,
A marker on the map that used to be our sphere,
But plastic, seared and deflated,
We can resume our place.
All the paintings in his house
Were of the walls themselves.
Replicating boundaries,
Untraveled seas,
And memories
With each framed
Canvas layer,
His own brush painted
Dust and cracks
Between the shelves.
He held perfection,
Crushed, then glued
It back together,
And hoped that she
Was doing the same.
We keep sliding on the soft underside
Of the bar of soap,
Hoping
No grimy fingers
Will press us
Further in,
Already held by a sudsy glue,
We knew
We wanted clean hands,
But we’re not purified,
Just coated with white film,
Growing unnoticed beneath
A thick tombstone.
Two pennies in the pool,
Wishes washed,
Purified
By sun and stares,
Your glares
Inspire me
To throw
My own dreams
Away.
Seconds should tick,
Not flicker down,
Digitally compressing
Until they fly away,
Spinning green
Like little lights
On a UFO.
Life is time,
Time is sound.
Rounded fingernails click
On the tabletop,
Mental metronome
Sensory overload,
Don’t drop
The tempo.
Split ends,
Blending,
Bending into ragged
Piggyback rides,
Sliding in thin
Between the
Healthy strands
On all sides,
Refusing to break
But making
Cracks in
A confident head
All the same.
Small talk,
The first test of endurance
For a quickly swelling tongue.
Harder questions then are flung
Until hitting
The back of the throat,
They slide down
To the stomach where
Butterflies should flutter,
But instead a swarm of wasps
Sting each phrase,
You utter
Utter nonsense
Just to keep
Their veiny wings
Away.
