Sasha

15

she takes the sun in her teeth and carries it with her...
like a blind on a yellow-glass window, the sunset descends, like
a bird flying south, she goes east
traversing glittering roads, overrun with
weeds that break through their roofs and unfurl their buds.
but all that glitters can never be gold, and
at dusk she is reaching her fortress

and she calls it her home.

and she tells me goodbye with
her heart on her sleeve and her
laugh in her eyes and her
heart on my sleeves,
and she holds me a moment
her face reaching over my shoulder
(she kisses it quickly, with care)
and entranced I am waving her off.

these scenes
(being of no explicable consequence)
I shed them: skinless on the cutting room floor, they rest
heedless of time, or
obsolescence

yet, to these fleeting instances
I owe my strange existence

and to her steady heart I owe
my life.