I wash a mug with soap and suds like

the wet, sloppy tongue of a cat licking her young.

Reminded of the way my grandmother would

 

care to keep the gold gilded china chipless.

You have faded with time and cracked with

the dry desert El Paso air, a crystallization of

 

heat against my mother’s face as you helped

her tears wash down the drain.

My mother who has held me as I cried

 

because I learned that one day the stars must die.

I learned the same a decade late as my breath

caught in my chest at my grandmother’s wake

 

for thoughts I had when I was fourteen

as I wash the knives in the sink, buried

in the past and the scars that a teenager

 

directs at themselves instead of the world.

The world freezes as rain and sleet muddy the dirt

beneath my feet. As cars splash the silt into the sky,

 

falling on an empty park, like snowflakes showing the

beauty to a dirt sullied day. I swing between

the past and the now as the metal hinges creak above,

 

Legs driving until numb and rubbery,

muscles freezing in the frigid air.

The weight of the future pulling on the rusted chains.