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Your Way Out is Through the Garden
seventeen years we went before I knew your friends
names you barely know now and you kept them
absent from me as you keep yourself still, so leave
stay cradle-tucked away as a soothing, sour breast
pocket letter I wrote a long time ago and you kept it
as close as your friends, in a sense
I know you; you want me as whiskey going down easy
making you fuzzy, spitting skins of salted sunflower seeds
th-pping-th-pping—
flooding the green-glass ashtray on our mantel; you gave up
smoking long ago but held onto the equipment like a heavy,
hoard of breath waiting to be used again for anything
other than spat nutlets of the pith leftover, stripped
from our heads of picked-at stems, sneeze-weeds
from our backyard horticulture
I see you :: you want me to forget that bit too? I saw it
through the garden, you leaving the path, seething
steps' impressions follow you—though first paired
depressions, the imprints as all after them, stay
in placating place until the next rain
glazing the brown, composting ground of stage
melting your trespass
into the foreground, back at level-set
ready for another sprouting or the last grasping
seizure of breath from a neck stretching
to see over the gate looking for a new path
on the way out
Copyright ©
Jaymee Thomas
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