Summer with Friends, 2010
I've found a place for last year's scrapbook.
Pressed between the dictionary and the history
book, complete with primary documents. I find
the way the scrapbook pages cry, as cellophane often does,
mocks each strained grin at birthday bonanzas and drunken
barbecues, each wail makes the album hard to open.
How long did the album sit on the coffee table?
Dust films the cover, mucking the black and white
lace pattern meant for wedding albums. I liked
the cover, not for matrimony, but for candid moments
of the time we dueled on the putt-putt course
with our golf clubs brandished like javelins.
Your sister's wedding picture is here.
I was not there, but I liked the way she looked
in white, and you in red. Your faces forge
each other in the snowy drifts. She smiles.
But you look off, not at the camera,
but into the fourth wall, staring down dimensions
into planes we promised we would never cross
or wring a ring, just lines that marked boundaries
implied by the edge of a polaroid.
I drag a finger into a thick line of dust
admiring the dull sheen of ignored plastic
before I slip it into place beside
the novel about our founding fathers.
Beside Merriam-Webster. In front
of a promise of another album that you and I
will not be in together. The perfect spot.
Tangible forget-me-nots, forgotten between
meaning and the pursuit of happiness--
what more can I, a young girl, want?
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