When I wrote about the grief inside myself
It wasn’t me I described
But you
The two of you who made the me
And then like rice thrown at midday wedding
Scooped me up and put me to boil down
On a high flame with no watchers
I burned to nothing
Leaving a sticky rim around the pan
Reminiscent of starch and glue
Like your clothes always pressed, clinging to your neck in hot weather
Or the piles of things he began and disguarded
I stepped
Out of the hot pan
Walked through greese and debris
Every step I took something stuck
Bits of dirt, jam, floss and mud
Moments
Pressed like thirsty flowers to dry flat between books
What would you have done differently, with the benefit of heindsight?
Too late for that ironic idiom, pass the parcel
Til you’re the last without a chair and resolve is bare
Just a quick ticking heart, searching in shadow
Unended furniture where they left, in a hurry to escape, what they had yet to learn
I was hungry for you to care
But you birthed me on sweltering tarmac and took off
Your quickening feet on fire
I melted into pitch and asphalt, rising
Like a badly fixed road will buckle and bow, emptying hunchback, the misshapen and malformed
Limping its circumference at night, skin tapping, indigo beetle hide
Like a fantastical shaman with shaded eyes of a moth and fingers of water
Dips his fountain pen, scrawls my fate in runic blood
You who were ill prepared and unwilling, gave up the burden of your consummation
To thrive or drown, two choices thrown with skittering dice
Take your place at the wheel of Fortune, await your turn
When the heat of days lessens and short respite from hurting
Can be found