Standing alone-
a pop whose neurological symptoms
as a youth just confused you, blossomed
that fatherly distance from dysfunction
and budding Dad-absences, into
a levy-buckling flood as mom's bloody custody bath was set-
your ripped Levi's rushing in grasses. Perhaps it was childish.
That sidled grin. Sirens ring... but you popped open my window.
We'd dive in the creek, bottling minnows 'til Officer Kazka
caught us- but you got him in, soaked. That giggled laugh
was a song shrieked through the little gaps of lost piano teeth.
Or the drying oils of a finger palette, strands of green and blonde
between my Hot Wheels sheets. We grasped our hands, close.
Sinusoidal sobriety of a battered man, ghost. Squeaking soft,
you'd sneak me off. For ninety days a year he'd be your weekend haunt.
That sidled grin, covered in the lie of a jersey cotton sleeve.
It invites you in, trusting eyes of a butterfly cupping a gutted wing.
Skeletal. Every moment bare but for the caress of time's fabric.
Father sky, wrapped inside an infinite braided loop
and while he writhes & hangs inside the sun and moon,
what became of you?
Midwest town whose pretty sighs, a symphony, wedding bells rend.
Chasing down life's idiosyncracies in a deftly held net,
she's thinly veiled. This is number three.
She always seems to eventually let them go.
We both remember it's better to be free than to be freed.