when we were young
we would play by the train tracks oblivious to the bright red lights screaming into our setting summer sun
we would pick the dandelions out from in between the wrought iron that grew like our legs long and gangly and too fast
and we would cover ourselves in dirt
crusting it underneath our fingernails, so that they would contrast dangerously with the brilliant pink of a sky painted by the sun
and weave for me my white prince a daisy crown to wear a top my head so I can command you to love me
because the moon is rising and our love fades with the light
rather than blooms
like those magic flowers some Arab prince grew in his garden
that no one ever saw because he died in his sleep
and now one ever will, not to be found, lost
one hot night with sweat beads on your temples and on my upper lip that neither of us seemed to or wanted to notice
you dug around your tattered blue levi pockets and produced one small marble, squeezing between white finger-tip beds
you pronounced every syllable of “cat-eye”, as if teaching to me taste the words before I devoured them
meeting my worshippers eye’s, your calloused fingertips brushed mine with tender
nonchalance
so this time I noticed and so I turned to you and asked:
how can you make something so natural into something manufacture, mass produced?
You shrugged your shoulders, your father’s shoulders
And with your mother’s lips you brushed my too small forehead with baby hairs not yet outgrown
And with that moment or in that moment I lost my innocence
But not to you, but to that marble
That I just couldn’t understand
As it
Fell
from
My fingers
and sang
One
Last note
Before disappearing
From you
And me
For what we know,
Because we’ve been taught
Eternity.