Tabitha Vohn's Blog - Posts Tagged "prose-poetry"
Poem: Recollect
This isn't for the boy who's gonna make it
Although I write about him too often
To fill that empty heart space with daffodil-scented air
when he's gone This is for the one I forgot
A passing point of refracted light
in the peripheral
I read a poem today about a boy who stole things
and I remembered that night you called me and
offered to lift from Kmart anything I wanted.
Watches perfume...you laundry listed all the things
you'd liberated
Proud
Like a child with Crayola murals on the white living
room walls you wanted so badly to impress me
You showed up at the family reunion I hated to go to
the one where I felt as out of place as you cause why
acknowledge the moonshiners and molesters their
cans of cheap American beer and dirty mesh trucker
caps who threw your Pap away like graying meat? By
the creek you picked me up wedding threshold style
like I weighed nothing despite that you were slimmer
than me the energy beneath your skin like fire
brimming in iron chambers with no chimney raging to
get out
And I was snow white fifteen. And I was afraid of you.
I couldn't get you off the phone and wrote my dad a
note for once relishing those harsh tones reserved to
make me quake
I said "say I have to go. Now!" It was the only cruelty I
knew more subtle than honesty Of why--at fifteen--
animal wound open
I couldn't save myself let alone you
I was glad
when you stopped calling.
I feel like years later my mom said you'd been arrested
for drugs or assault or something of the like
the devil in me whispered to the angel in me
"see: I told you so"
the devil in me said "you could never have saved him.
He would've eaten your fear like sweet plum colored
candy."
"Like you," the light in me asks?
Maybe it wasn't the trembling or the cowering he
wanted.
Maybe it was the snow white girl who took walks by
the creek
and kissed all her stuffed animals at night
In a pink bedroom with clean sheets
and a mother who didn't drink or scream
and a father not as badly broken beyond repair
in the picket fence house with non shuttered windows
That he found sweet.
Although I write about him too often
To fill that empty heart space with daffodil-scented air
when he's gone This is for the one I forgot
A passing point of refracted light
in the peripheral
I read a poem today about a boy who stole things
and I remembered that night you called me and
offered to lift from Kmart anything I wanted.
Watches perfume...you laundry listed all the things
you'd liberated
Proud
Like a child with Crayola murals on the white living
room walls you wanted so badly to impress me
You showed up at the family reunion I hated to go to
the one where I felt as out of place as you cause why
acknowledge the moonshiners and molesters their
cans of cheap American beer and dirty mesh trucker
caps who threw your Pap away like graying meat? By
the creek you picked me up wedding threshold style
like I weighed nothing despite that you were slimmer
than me the energy beneath your skin like fire
brimming in iron chambers with no chimney raging to
get out
And I was snow white fifteen. And I was afraid of you.
I couldn't get you off the phone and wrote my dad a
note for once relishing those harsh tones reserved to
make me quake
I said "say I have to go. Now!" It was the only cruelty I
knew more subtle than honesty Of why--at fifteen--
animal wound open
I couldn't save myself let alone you
I was glad
when you stopped calling.
I feel like years later my mom said you'd been arrested
for drugs or assault or something of the like
the devil in me whispered to the angel in me
"see: I told you so"
the devil in me said "you could never have saved him.
He would've eaten your fear like sweet plum colored
candy."
"Like you," the light in me asks?
Maybe it wasn't the trembling or the cowering he
wanted.
Maybe it was the snow white girl who took walks by
the creek
and kissed all her stuffed animals at night
In a pink bedroom with clean sheets
and a mother who didn't drink or scream
and a father not as badly broken beyond repair
in the picket fence house with non shuttered windows
That he found sweet.
