It Was Simple
Before times were hard, they were simple.
The dew bloomed in your 6AM eyes
Your heart was a candle sat on a cottage table kitchen
But hearts aren’t meant to be kept inside cottages
Or barnside silos
The wax dripped down onto your bare feet
The strain on your foot from our forever hug creating sweat
Wherein the little koi fish candle-droplets could swim
The light has gone out from the last house on the block
The funeral-home orange turns jet-black as nails of lost loves
Now I sit in this armchair bleeding tiny death certificates
For our memories,
Fluffing the paint roller as sage grouse do with their plumage
Whilst courting mates
Putting our laughs in the fireplace as they wriggle away,
Hiding themselves behind the white curtains as beetles.
I am now standing at the top of a lighthouse that begs for you
I have made a chain of enveloped letters across the lake
So you can sigh your way back to me, one by one
And rest your sea-scroll bones of yesterdays
In the sand that has your eye crust somewhere in it
And let the baby blue crabs crawl raw temptation back in your toes
For I see you on the sandbar with your grave-keeper’s lamp
Watching me like if they made a balloon of
The moment a boy saw his first pet die.
I once laid pellets on the carpeted staircase for my hamster
One by one she’d crawl up the carpet and take them
Moving on to the next, and then the next…
I thought I was making her happy
Giving her exercise, giving her food
But she exploded when I put her back into her cage.
Nine months and she was dead, gone.
It was simple.
The light has gone out from the last house on the block
The funeral-home orange turns jet-black as nails of lost loves
Now I sit in this armchair bleeding tiny death certificates
For our memories.
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