Blue

There's a boba place in the mall
Where we used to buy ice cream
And a seafood restaurant
Where there once was
A Sweet Tomatoes. 

But the mailboxes await me
Like a line of ghosts 
Standing at sentry
To the low stone walls
And chipped sidewalks
That pull my thoughts 
As if I can feel in them
An endless cascading vibration
Set in motion against time
Mated to a memory
Of an echo of myself.

I didn't plan to come here.

Though

I'd also never meant to leave.

Now there's new cars in the driveways

And colored garden lights

Yet the neighbor's saguaro
Still stretches its fingers 
Into the endless blue. 

And they still use the number tiles 
With the flower print
And the front door 
My father made 
Two years before he died. 

They've painted it. 

Blue.

(2024)