beans like holidays
withered, black spots like sunshine
i throw them sideways till they learn
better than to wither
it's the tarp over the swimming pool,
1993, and i am in board shorts and brimming
my head over the water, my pale body
wants nothing and i am thinking less
than drowning more, rescued by a man, ok.
it's 37 degrees, the sun hops over the shade
and i stand on the steps but i want to go
where the sun is twinkling brightly.
it's nighttime and the revelry is in full swing
i think we gave up backyard cricket hours
before the beer whistled through the grown-ups
teeth, they had eskies like triage units
set by the fence, made better seats
than temples, i guess the swimming
pool haunts me, i can hear its pump
when there is a lull.
someones eyes crash into mine, i don't
remember who they were, it's nearly as
hard to remember who i was-
more evidence see, like pencil lines on the
wall. one of those years i was tall enough
to pull the pin on the fence and go into the
pool, i had forgot the sun, my hair would turn
green, i think i would go under and come
up again, rushing water from my face and
maybe i was 12, close enough to strangle
myself with awkwardness-
she wasn't my cousin, i guess everything can't be
as cliche as everything else, or what we want it
to be...but she was probably years older
and i tented slightly, and she grinned
like the same as when the sun was twinkling
in 1993 and the pool noodle and kickboard of bright yellow and weird purple bobbed at the surface
and if i dove in i would drown
but i did anyway
and i was rescued, but how do you rescue yourself
from the year 2000 and the cute but fiendish
mocking of a girl who you can't really remember
but for shorts which will dry on the fence
and be reshaped again and again by nothing
more than a memory?
-
i go back to the beans, i know them now,
that i have spilled them from open hands,
they are as slippery as memory, or
as well crunched upon, leaving me to
misspell nearly all that i am as i split my
shell on what has been.
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