Watching television

and passively feeling light

    drip 

             and glow 

              across my face

I resolve that

The reason for tomorrow

is beauty

Beauty in this boredom

Beauty in poetry

Beauty in the lost look of my reflection

watching someone who isn’t quite looking back;

My mirror sees me

I don’t not see her

Still

I present my life to the mirror

And she gazes fondly at my crow-like collection

The lucky find of

The rings we find incredibly fitted for us

Perfect cloth stitches syncing to our jewelry

The even, symmetrical peel of a citrus

       Yet

There is a resounding

    tiredness

 When I leave the world

It is all of these things:

Soft manicured nails and laughs sounding heartily from my chest

And the redness of rubbed skin

Along my lashes

My heart is sore from this

Like a memory, far away

In a flimsy portrait frame of fog

It reminds me

When my childhood friend and I

Would explore into her woods

My mind whirring, crying

“Mom will know!”

“Mom won’t like this!”

“Mom, mom, mom!”

“Mom,” I begged.

“Let me be forgotten for one minute

While I explore the soil.”

And the canopy thickens

And we find rivets in the hillsides

Bridges from travelers lost in the same ancient exodus

we follow now

We are brides to childhood

To freedom

To beauty

To the best friends we’ve ever had

Soaring through the air

In your childhood sneakers

(Mom will surely see they’re soiled

Mom will watch my dirt trail after my socks

And I, too, will dirty this memory as I follow it)

Kicking off from the moss

Finding the distance too far from 

                                            The other side of the stream

                                                       And beginning to fall

Cracked sticks

And hushed cries

     We make bandaids out of our fingers

      And hug in our innocence

In many of my memories

I exist in a moment that I cannot remember how I left

I wish to do this 

With the way I live now

Feel its glory

Without remembering what I felt like 

To stand

And walk out the door