Merchants

Can music belly misconceptions, melt on the tongue or the tail of what one thought was tragic, but was only trial (at most).

It's beginning, the slight, sighted storm. It's beginning, these familiar twitches that wake me and wash of faith. Could I belong in the same position as that dark, dimpled man? Could I be, at this marker of my life, a female version of his venom?

Ripe

I can sense the smell of mangoes from afar, when I reach for the phone. How silly, how surreal that the scents of that summer living look back at me now.

I can sense the meat of morning, the metal glances of the outdoor kitchen, yellow sandals that squeezed my toes.

I remember thinking to myself in the hardest times (which now, silly, syrupy in that sweet past, grasp me in giggles, in their ornate armor of youth) that this time would mark me. That I would not move beyond, but within and with those momentary glances at growth, at the feathery mornings so hot and humid that my breath begged back at powdered juice, the silicone dippers that I splayed and splashed my skin.

As if I was among the waves that willowy, slightly abandoned, lay down the road, of access only be bareback, or the long, lean legs of youth.

In a precious peach flavor, sticky as the drawn out dews I slept amongst; sharp as the beats of the fan that flattened those batting bloodsuckers, miniature, skeletal makings of god.

Somehow, now, in my attempt to contact them--to reach out to that small sliver of who I was before this, before I felt a monopolized, marginalized self. Of all the complexities implicit in learning love. Somehow now it seems so large a part.

They are giant these wings, these pattering tongues of my time in that shade, much tougher to leave behind--even now, years later and many miles, many mes away--than times in sun.

What Dreams?

As a point of pride in my third grade class, I pronounced that I had never needed a dream journal; the images poured themselves fresh each morning, delicate complements to my white bread rolls and pressed juice. These days, the daughter that I am, I dream of actual moments, sometimes waking in the sort of dapper daze that melds dream and reality. Despite their melancholy, I need these dreams to remind me that memory lies right behind, that this gauzy gaze of mourning cannot negate our own mornings, our many years.

And so, soggy with sadness, but still with strength, with the strides that I took beside him, I am thankful for this small inner gift, for the nights when I can remember his voice, when his sprinkled beard is fit and familiar. When his gaze looks back at me. In rest from the rest of the time, when the hurt curls and calls out, when even small moments of happiness feel awkward and imbalanced; when I feel I have forgotten.