You
Richard Sitoski
Weekends find you on the couch
eating popsicles with authority
while I search for a job in a town
where they put buttons in collection plates.
Your photosynthetic hands rejoice
when exposed to nightlights
and when you nap you are an oven
cooling after baking bread.
The same things make us cry so that
shedding tears we are perfect rhymes.
You tolerate the neighbour whose face
is a shaking house when a door is slammed
and you hold me in a way that I don’t
become a spruce tree crawling with
budworms. You make me happy enough
to face a future alone though I lack
your confidence with sunlight
as a sculpture medium. Believe me
when I say expect a jealous god to rise
from a vat of pesticides and come for us
with bureaucratic intent. But I will not
look back as he chases us Eurydice.
So grab the hem of my hospital gown.
I’ve got this. His carnivore’s breath
in your hair is so last year. His lampblack
fingers will catch in the quantum field
we swim through. We shall thrive and sing
down clouds from a sky so blue it’s ruthless
while he remains what he is. An emo kid
jealous of the living – we who are so smug
with our tiny sandwiches after a funeral.
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