(Started last Summer, finished only recently.)
They are locked behind barred lips,
Never to see the shining glad sun,
Nor to see compassionate blue eyes.
Words of
Darkness,
Distress,
Depression.
Heavy,
Forlorn,
Orphaned words.
Words that make my heart seem as if
It was crafted from lead.
Like small drops of
Nothing,
Fallen from a white throat.
They are never to be given voice.
Like a wound
That must not be revealed;
And can not be revealed.
Suffered in solitude, no one suspects.
Like Invisible teardrops of blood,
Falling to a checkerboard floor,
There they are to be lapped up by a
Dark and lonely,
Invisible terrier.
I see an abandoned and crushed straw hat,
Smelling of summer,
Thrown carelessly over my closet bar,
Like all of the summer months condensed,
It brings remembrance of the good times-,
{When you canoe smooth as silk and fast as time across the murked lake,
A straw fedora sitting upon your brunette head.
It was given to you by your Grandmother last summer,
When you wanted that sort of thing.
.
{Laughing and talking loudly with your siblings,
Your soul soars across the darkening sky.
You follow your younger sister as she swims like an eel,
Long and smooth in the water,
Her astonishingly long hair flowing behind her,
A contrast to her decidedly tomboy attitude.
You paddle swiftly toward her
As she waits grinning with her horse-like teeth,
Her arms and legs pushing against the water
And the black deep below.
{Your brother sitting behind you,
Paddling with rapid, strong strokes,
His muscles clearly showing through his tanned and clear skin.
You reach your sister,
Your canoe’s wake trailing smooth as glass on the tourmaline water.
{She attempts to board your diminutive ship,
Snaking long,
Tanned arms over the side,
A spidery leg accompanying a few feet across.
She tries to heave her blue clad body up into the sleek, green canoe,
Only to have it rock threateningly.
{You shriek,
High and shrill,
Like a whistle blown by a traffic-directing policeman, alerting to danger,
{And she hastily splashes back into the cool water.
She tries a few times more.
Hesitant,
And unsure.
She’s done this before,
Many times before,
But the experience is always new,
Like a logger truck
Careening down a steep mountain-slope
Of a road.
{She grips the side of the canoe again,
And she heaves,
The canoe rocks,
Then tips over completely,
Flipping onto its top,
It lands all three of you into the water,
Flailing,
Splashing,
And shrieking,
Once again.
{Suddenly,
All noise ceases,
It is calm and quiet, you swallowed little water,
And you don’t really need to breathe just yet.
The bottomless dark below is serene,
As if you were suspended within your mind.
You can’t stay forever;
You do need to breathe,
Even if you wish it weren’t so.
{Eventually you push,
Gliding toward the surface,
The evening sky; and the world.
You break into the air,
Taking a deep breath as water splashes all around you.
{You survey the scene,
You can see your brother and sister,
The canoe is upside-down,
And the paddles calmly float away from your group.
Amazingly, your straw hat remains on your head, soaking wet,
And still the same shape it was before you got dunked.
{If only the paddles were so easily accounted for}
-But it’s just a memory, recounted with sadness, or fond nostalgia.
A memory that seems almost melancholy in your present mood,
A mood of dark thoughts,
And tarnished longings.
You get to the core of this swirling pool of emotions;
You feel like the invisible girl,
Forever reaching out while others turn their faces away
Towards the things that you will not experience.
They leave you behind.
Like a forgotten and intricate pebble,
You are left by the roadside,
Under an over-reaching sky,
Beneath the waving grass,
Waiting for someone new to come along,
Waiting for the process to start all over again.
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