i sit across from a boy who specializes in musical theatre, a smile like pop rocks, sugary and crackling
he grins and i can see the flower-nurturing sidewalk cracks on the lower sides of his face, his line-dimples
he's going to miss me.
i can tell by the way he grinned, a different kind of grin, a necessary one making him all the more melancholy than happy
he doesn't look sad, but i know him.
he's a good actor, i think.
he clears his throat and keeps the non-stop, candy-caked glow of his pulsing and flickering and pulsing.
i take a moment, shroud myself in a wispy cloud of thought and ask myself if this is how we fall apart ,
if this is when i see him last and when the snowflake memories of his favorite song and how he loves pomegranates and his loud personality or how his nose scrunches up when he laughs or how his voice is almost musical will fade away.
i clear the fog and suddenly instead of the lunch tables at school we're on the beach, the sound of the waves and the slow crawl of the grains of warm sand
we carve his name and mine
into the sand together
the serene tyrant of the ocean washes them away in the waves
the next time, we carve it higher up on the rocky hill of the beach and hope not for a tsunami
but in a damp, sandy, sun-spotted pinky promise,
he marks a vacant yet occupied sandcastle plot in my heart
and i wake up again and he's still smiling at me
i look down and offer him a loaded simper sweetened with natural sugar
when he's gone, i'm dissatisfied, and the thought flashes through my mind:
i could have been his.
YOU ARE READING
spoonful of sugar
Poetryi think that if he and his short-lived denouement astounded me so then this would be much deeper
