...The Pumpkin Patch...

I would love to keep you quiet

up there in the air

Where you don't care

about the raspberries in my hand

or the juice they fail to provide

or the advice you fail to take

or the upside down can

leaking out blood orange soda

on the counter

that I know

that you left in your flurry of impatience

with your innermost thoughts

...

I would love to extinguish

the white fire burning

smelling of plastic and

entrapment

...

I would love to lift you out of it

(but you want to rot there, in defiance)

scoop you out of the pumpkin pit of it

(where the walls cannot be climbed)

where it smells like the dead autumn leaves

(where I will one day stare up at you from below)

and seeds among the stringy pulp so stubborn

(where I first realized the skill under your nails)

and slippery between our fingers

...

You missed it because I let you

I didn't insist on you being there

and slowly three

became two

became one

and I learned

to let you go, that I must

let everyone go

I didn't insist

but I wanted to

in my sharp old way

I wanted to

But it is framed now

Kept back by the biting down

on my lip

By the words lodged

in the clavicle concave

burrowed deep in the soil

of the Pumpkin Patch