Tatyana Carney | + Follow Poet |
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Closure.

Suddenly, I would give anything to be near you.
I would buy back our old house, broken down, dilapidated.
Loquat trees and rainbows removed.
Hammocks and honeysuckle given to the wind.
But where would you be?
Would you visit me in dreams as I slept in a room that was only yours?
The light from long gone sleeping limbs of rain trees
still dancing their shade in my dreams in a reflection of all that you loved?
Where would you be?
I could walk the same streets I walked as a child.
The asphalt sighing relief to be near my steps again.
Neighbors, long dead, still quiet in bleached white houses.
Gardenia bushes still tempting me to wear an ornament behind my ear,
to brown the white flesh of flowers.
But where would you be?
I could climb our old roof and sunbathe two strokes nearer to a solar universe
than ever before.
I could plug my ears with music and close my lids to the orange orb
and dissolve.
Dissolve into 16 years old.
Dissolve into safety, undoing the jaded burns of sorrow on my lips.
But where would you be?
Loquat trees window me in a just a short bloom.
Fruitage to be savored before it reaches sunstroke.
Rainbows, too, pass by with the wave of the sprinkler.
I could jump through, soaking wet, at age 10,
stringy hair and naive smile shining.
But, where would you be?
Hammocks leave their dreams to their occupants,
just an empty netted carcass without human weight.
The sweetest honeysuckle only knows hummingbirds in secret
as it bids them fly before our eyes tether their wings.
So, now, I ask you in pleaded breath, where would you be?

Perhaps, the street.
They could tear down your house, my house, the safety of a universe gone by,
strip it of it's trees and it's ability to produce life,
and the street would still remember you.
Sunflower seed shells tossed to it's skin.
Thorns of bougainvillea's washed down it's drains.
Your DNA somewhere still alive in a crevice cracked from a summer torrential downpour
where your footsteps smiled soaking wet.

Perhaps, it would all be worth it.

I will shake myself awake at half past seven.

I will bulldoze my own insignificant sorrow,
my own living in past dreams, 
my own inability to cope with a future devoid of your laugh,
and I will find you, among the many layers of the skin I call my own.

And tonight, with the remaining half of my heart in my hands, 
I'll meet you on our street for one last evening walk.

Copyright © Tatyana Carney | Year Posted 2006

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