...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
