Untitled (Gold Dust)

I showed him my fingertips

Covered in glittering dust

Remnants from my efforts to clean the rock collection

That sits on my shelf

Gathering decay and memories

 

And I asked him

Do you know how to pan for gold?

I'd told him before so I shouldn't have asked

But I wanted us to remember together

So I could, through him, remember my father

Telling me how the gold is heavier

And sinks deep

Settling into the grooves when everything else doesn't

When all the lighter things move on

Washing away with the water

Though 

I knew the shimmering flakes

Among the dust and cat fur

Were really only mica

The antibiotic I've been taking

For the unnamed rot growing inside me

Leaves my piss more yellow than those gently shining shards

It’s the whole reason I'm cleaning anything

This desperate but unbelieving hope

That I can scrub away this sickness

 

So that maybe when the morning finds me

I can leave it behind

 

Like waking from a dream

So it wasn't like I thought

I was showing him something special

I really just needed

A small bit of magic dredged up from the depths

Something sunk into the folds

Something with weight

Something special that I could show him

Observation 10

Observation:
The neighbor's tree hangs over our yard
A cascade of blossoms like a waterfall
And when the wind blows
It rains in white petals
Dancing over the heads of squirrels
Who dig at the ground for seeds
Unmoved

Observation 9

Observation:
In line with our natures
We made a perfect cave for ourselves
Solace wrapped in darkness
Dry and full of such soft things
Warm blankets bathed in fresh cold air
I shift my covers and they crackle like fire
Light flaring and falling in the space of a breath
Alive in the time between heartbeats
It's such a ghost of a thing
That it possesses me completely
A whisper of magic as small as the sky

Observation 8

Observation:
I love when the sky looks like this
When the day’s final sigh
Fogs the celestial glass
With a blushing band in the west
The color of orange cream soda
Swelling into the encroaching blue
That velvet blanket is already adorned
In twinkling opaline fire
A funhouse mirror
That changes the above and below
A reality reconsidered
A magician unfurling his cloak for the prestige

Observation 7

Observation:
His hat declares him a corporal
And his left eye is the rebel flag
He says he had a heart attack
And he left the next morning
The doctors said he’d be back
That no one wants to die
He says that he’d already been saved
Back in Vietnam
But if he’d known how things would go
He never would have let them

Observation 6

Observation:
The shopping cart
That I first saw on the lot
And then in a dumpster
And then in front of a different one
Turned down and out of place
Is now tucked behind a wall
As if it is hiding
Ashamed
Or wounded from neglect
A rat rises from its basket into the trees
I thought we were alone here

Observation 5

Observation:
I went outside without my phone
I want to say I noticed the grapefruit colored sky
Or the knots hanging from the branches of the neighboring palm
But these things were already in my vocabulary
In truth what I noticed was how the drone of the cicadas
Merged with the thrum of AC units
And heavy traffic in the distance