A strange dissipating girl has gone missing. Her father can’t seem to remember where he placed her. He thought she was leaning against the wall, next to the red-clogged drain. He and his wife wear matching snarls and necklaces of soft white baby teeth.
You’re soaked in bleach for a trend,
acid burning holes through jeans.
You flaunt faded tie-dye tees that
used to be more vibrant.
It stings your eyes to hide
that now forgotten shade of brown.
Insides burned like an exploding sun,
a boy’s haircut on a nine year old girl!
Curls chopped to the ears… Please,
turn away to laugh at that last line.
Some memories fade much faster than scars
from canning on our old dining room table.
I said ‘goodnight’ after you took my mind for a ride,
but you always run when I’m what you find.
Shaking next to me, just a boy and girl on a floor,
Finally kissing, and not for the first time.
I can never know “what if,”
only guess while I drive home.
Here’s hoping I’m still in your head,
making your dreams tonight.
A three-year-old witch costume rips. She shivers and sparkles under a dripping moon her matching shoes marching ahead, her matching hat getting caught by the bark of an outstretched tree branch. Excitement, fun size skittles scatter into undistinguished black bags. Plastic orange pumpkin buckets swing keeping a cadence of hard candies. Dum dums drum and thrash the insides of werewolves and Tinkerbells alike. Little angels wiggle their soggy wings toward warm minivans at 8:01 when waiting mothers finally disband the demons.
A tattooed mother and her two daughters, one quiet eating an ice cream cone the other spoiled, outspoken and done up like a Barbie doll. An old black guy came looking for rakes, shovels and hoes. The man handed us two dollars, Zach handed him a green plastic rake.
We kept doing that, selling things that weren’t for sale. Marking down useless things collected and displayed on the lawn. I accepted an eight dollar check from a neighbor that I haven’t cashed yet and an army recruiter took a piss-soaked leather couch off our hands for twenty bucks. He actually had nineteen dollars and forty-two cents.
A stringy haired woman with heavy eyelids untangled gaudy grandmother jewelry in a plastic bin. “You’re in my light.” The fuzzy-headed teenager stopped hovering over his mother and ran towards Rainbow Drive, tearing leaves from our tree, throwing helicopter flowers in the street as cars sped by gawking at our cluttered garage.
“Switch me.” The mother maneuvered her three-legged walker, pushing her blonde daughter back so she could get at the next shelf. She ended up buying three seasons of a TV show on DVD and two nearly identical cross necklaces. Before they left the girl snatched one, “That’s mine!” I didn’t see which color.
