Poetry / A Grain of Salt

Into this suit case, the empty one that was supposed to hold your dreams, I pack your life; everything you’ve acquired so far.
Let me first comment on the suit case itself: it’s very nice, black with matching smooth and shining liner.
Really would have been great for housing dreams.
It’s too bad, I do suppose its quite too late for that just now – now that it’s been filled with all these things.

On the bottom I laid the framed portrait you gave to me, the one of yourself.
Smiling with huge teased hair and gaudy faux pearl earrings – you were only 12.
Such a humble beginning: it is the foundation.

Atop this, in the corner within the hidden pocket, I place the heart shaped pendant. The one you received along with your first real kiss.
Outside of there, a little more haphazardly and much less protected, I place the shot glass: “Thunderbird, this babe’s for YOU” it boldly screams.
Perhaps this love should be inside the pocket, but I can not change it now.
The first is hidden and the second will be seen by all who come close enough to peer over the flimsy wall.

And here, this yearbook – the one from 88 – I place opposite the objects of desire.
This is the one that you despise, where you smeared the faces of those who haunted you, shadows moving in your faults.
Flipping through the pages – briefly though I promise – I see the picture of that girl, the one who always smiled to you and gave a little wave. Her face is clouded too.
I’m sorry that I looked through, if only for a second or two, I saw that which I could not have imagined. I close it.

In the center I place the camera that captured – in just one shutter – more memories than I possess.
Every happy time lies somewhere between the gears circuit boards and wires.
Why, I wonder, do we never see that which makes us cry in these hidden places? Why can I not find an object of sadness; just one to show that all is not perfect?

However I do find signs of loss; the little things that bring a smile, even though a frown is all that was required.
The photo of you two together, before you found the one of he and the other, together still.
And the severed collar, the only part that was left in the end.
The plate and bolts that put you out for an entire season.
The dried roses, pink ones with white and yellow, all around them.
All these things I take and place them in the center; between your love and your vengeance, atop the foundation you gave to me so very long ago.

You wished this mess would go away.  Well here it goes.  Packed away in this suitcase, the one for dreams, swaying at my hip.
Every “fucking mistake” you ever made.  Every way in which this “goddamn world”         played you.
Say good bye.  Because here it goes – it ends.  Say good bye, quickly before you realize just how much you’re going to miss this suitcase and me.
The one that’s supposed to be for all your dreams.

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