I sat with my pale chest, freckled shoulders
out for the sun and the tree with one branch
overcrowded with peaches; the dried-up
bird bath, and you, wandering around the
tomato plants that I look at, red, like
carnival lights framing your skin, tattooed
with years of looking at the same spectrum
of light that keeps our cartoons visible
to our ghosts in curtains of hungry clothes,
to take a seat, there, by the tree with its
single eruption of fruit that never
nourished you back into your shirt or shoes
at the corner of our block where an auto
parts store and on the other a car lot
I always view as a passenger, so
I never really have to look too close
past your insect eyes in the black car to
a scenery of everything for sale;
laws barely written about how to breathe
with so many colors, the kitchen
red, bathroom green, the dog grey but also
kind of brown like the frame of the mirror
sitting un-hung in the closet that I
paid twenty-five dollars for and never
really said you could keep, from the thrift store
next to the auto parts store full of the
disassembled and aging domestic
stories of people moving on, passing
through these rooms, resold light fixtures and half-
functioning furniture because someone’s
history was of a better palette
I was never a lover, but a poor
collector of your tomatoes and clean-
smelling bed, but I did leave you a mirror
next to the jackets and dog food, maybe
you can see your teeth and earrings in it–
the places I prefer to remember
I sang to each time you weren’t looking in
another mirror at another tree.
Euphemism Campus Box 5555 Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790