let us rejoice while we are young

the beats from the years when I tried
to fix you
rang back,
blurry echoes pinging back and forth
between panther and little moose,
skimming the water like a startled loon,
flapping webbed toes against the
still water.

it never worked.
we wake up in cranky beds with light hearts
and stumble on a museum of her heartbreak
and its present tense in the kitchen,
even with its newly stripped walls,
as her hands rub each other frantically
over and over,
her long fingers lingering together.

three ferns still
sit framed in between four candles
on our long table.
unrecognizable dogs
lick feet and chase each other
beneath our toasts, graces
and the stories of her sisters,
and junrite and senrite kindergarden
she tells us.
over and over,
these days.

we slip down to the dock
after these circular tales
harmonize the
ice cream scooping, ping pong playing,
and living room laughing.
the silence then becomes quite loud,
the volume of sound filled with
vestiges of what was, and the uncertainty
of what will be.

as the darkness catches my tears,
i listen to the echoes of coldplay’s forgotten chords;
i gaze at us, sitting in the car,
pulled over
like tourists looking to feed the deer,
your face in your hands.

it’s slower now.
she strokes her own hands,
sometimes touches the headband,
as if to make sure that after fifty plus years
of resilience,
it won’t suddenly disappear,
like he did.

the turquoise and forest green pastel
remain rich and immortalized on our walls
even as she drifts away
stroking those hands,
i wrote as a middle school scholar.
today, i wonder
where she is now.

DLS