There They Are in a Row

Her name was Marie, hair that looked and smelled like straw,
eyes as if they would turn to liquid at the sight of presents brought by Santa beneath the tree on Christmas morning, big and blue.
Her narrow lips as if she was perpetually on the verge of asking a question
and glances away that make your gut swill.
A soft rasp behind square teeth and an optimistic belief that things could be real and a tongue that lashes out truths that hurt. She's quite beautiful.
She's a friend.

Her name was Jeanette, messy freckles on dry but soft skin,
a nose that points out the humor in all dark things and can grab us a glass of wine, if it's meant for us, on the floor of a living room.
A childish lilt and infectious laugh, but wit like a British prime minister
and a damsel in distress affectation that makes you regret everything.
Cut-up, stubby and selfish hands that write things down about the world in hopes of recognition of being unselfish and true. She's too like me.
I've lost a friend.

Her name was Elizabeth, a curly mane that wreaked of product,
round and brown could suitably describe her with the exception of her distaste, which had a brutal, unrelenting sharpness and cruelty.
So much of her was like cactus pricks, except from where they grew.
I had never seen such frigid carelessness in anything that wasn't hers and also the confused need to become an adult so quickly. But I never really loved her
I've gained resentment.

Her name was Jay, as if someone had pinched gum from the ground and pulled up,
the spindly, wiry, spinning silver fish with raven feathers chunking and whipping in circles around her, some left marks on her eyelids.
She was a time bomb of emotion dogs let off their leashes at a lake.
There was such a mutual need for both relief from and creation of disaster that the biggest lesson I learned was to not feel remorse. She was my greatest teacher.
I remain her apt pupil.

Her name is Mei, when the infinite amount of butterfly effects that preceded her
fell just into the right and uncommon order, producing a dream in its completion, not waking but staying in the fleeting moment that is so often forgotten.
Everything on her is like heated porcelain, so close to rupturing at a breath.
Passion gives way to respect and onto understanding and belief in something that could not be more rare and perfect. Apparently love can be learned.
The end.

Like a dream, to wince upon waking
what is a day in and out if not a year for fear?
a decade's dust settled and encrusted
trusted by kin and beloved
erodes by fire on fire
then spits in its sleep of ash

the hump heaves in pregnancy
draws in and blows goodbye kisses
a grey exterior both defends and offends
never seeming gleaming or serene
just grey in and grey out
somewhere in a middle
frothing like chimney soap

beneath begets a child of course
a source forgotten; a lute
upon which we learned what we hadn't yet
a tune from our fathers and sons
our authentic swing
a carrier of the give and receive
a home instilled

and patience brings us a rope
the dirt on the grade is loose like crumbs
yet the horizon has a buoyancy
and gazes nearer, crescenting the backdrop
in whiteness, lifting with look
presenting a crook
who's made to amend

and here stands a cactus without spines
weathered by wind but no more than time
carves out the world with inanimateness
the planted duress toward stress' molest

a quarter of a century to spring