Tiara

16

[A Prose Poem]

Regression

He leans back in a wicker lawn chair, arms folded behind his head. The skin on his face gathers in folds like his jeans—washed too many times—holding moisture of another life. A young couple sits at the bus stop across the street from his shoe-polishing stand. They kiss, fingers tangled in hair tangled in knots, lips and tongues stained with an afternoon’s berry lemonade. He spats. Passersby cringe: even the sunburned father with one hand on a three-child-stroller, even the half-naked woman who bikes against traffic, and the Asian woman with an umbrella in the middle of summer. Even he sometimes cringes. At himself, at the dusty jar labeled TIPS, at his empty left ring finger, and the wicker chair that he will soon give to his nephew, who will sit here, whistling through the gap in his teeth, a melody that trickles away as quickly as it comes.