Saturday, May 1, 2010

Fragments

On napkins, in notebooks, or scraps
shoved away in drawers,
the phrases like shirts draped over chairs,
tried on but never worn.
Thoughts that had a chance,
but were discontinued like ice cream flavors
you had loved but not enough people did:

the wildflowers from the farm
bursting from a tin pail,
and how the summer disappears.
How at age six I first saw Monet's waterlillies,
and after, all I could paint were
textureless waterlillies.
Five foot fourth grader grows normal.
Sex ed videos with people eating peaches.
Disaster du jour.
Claiming our innocence long after it's gone.
The conversations of our past
that we were too passive in.
In church, small and suffocated amongst
Polish women plump in fur and rouge.

And all of those will be lost in time,
crushed between pages of books
I'll never flip back through.
Thoughts with ellipses
that went untouched.

Alexandra Ustach

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