honeydunce

(what we wept for)

the cornfield is gone.
Our old neighborhood playground
Of stalk and rows
Turned into magician assistant–
Cut in half;
Disappearing dead end
Now
A road
You go
through my memory
To leave

The shutters on the house
They are a different color
Barns are soccer fields
The interstate expanding
A new distance ridiculous
The concept of home when you are
Too busy trying to define
The word concept.

My red and white steel mill shout
My favorite landmark between
Anywhere and my grandmother’s house.
During the holidays
They erect one skinny star next to
Thrust up flame never extinguished,
Not even to daylight.
My candy cane sleeping in soot,
Barbed arm fences raised
The washed out turn when it rains hard–
(The roads barely change)
The weeds I’ve seen you yesterday
Oh grow-anywhere champions, please convince me of this
That it was just
Yesterday

How many towns have to die
How many corners of before will tuck themselves in like this
How many caved in monuments
How can you mourn the certainty of things passing
When it feels awful & good all at once,
when you finally feel like a part of ‘supposed to,’
and awareness will not halt inevitable process

(diet of love letters & missing limbs
memory sets a fine table
says sweet things
asks you to stay the night
kicks you out with cheeks still shouting of pillow crease and sleep smell)
little did you know you are
loved incredibly by
everything you miss
the parts of self that split
learned lesson left it
stuck it in the ground to grow vine
web
and rust
come back to point in it’s
general direction
this is what we wept for:

the trees, the roots, the corn
all ripped like never been
painted over with asphalt and playing card houses
the boundary ghosts
puckered by repetitive entry and exit
the pockets of places,
sides of buildings and back porches
where the first sliver of a kiss happens
the first fissure of heart
the first avoid, short cuts that now
only exist in polaroid
for the street signs that still mean something
that still handshake the gut on sight
for the known we never know again
ours,
the bravest
the only way the once
could be lived.