babyhead

in my house, leaving keepsake filaments to loiter in black against the bathroom sink. At two-thirty in the afternoon, you descended the stairs, as if it were a causeway: a dangerous endeavor to meditate over for too long on either side of the dictated path. High summer light spread from the open doorways behind you. I barely see you hold your eyes half open. The diameter of your irises mimic the buttons of my winter coat, of that, you make no excuses, and I have no question of what you have been doing with your mornings.


With your round face, and a smug smile stuck in the corner of your mouth, you climb down the stairs to me in nothing but the royal blue two piece lifted off the rack at the Maxx and two sets of rose colored toenails.

There is something in your voice that explains to me that you have lived your entire life at summer camp as you say: I'm going swimming.

You are August in my house as the light rushing in from open screen doors grows to amber, and I place two fingers between stolen fabric.

Your left hand lingers on the rail as you lift my yellowed paperback tag sale copy of Cummings, cover ripped off before I knew it, and thump me to the chest.

'And your not invited.