you said wait a few years
you’d move to California
by then already gone

an ill-timed applause
two hands in magnetic
motion missing

like sipping fluid through
an allergic throat closing
such lean times

the tangerine sun
sleeps til noon

didn’t your dad write
a book on the art of joy?
because it is an art

a painting with overused
blues these uppers I knew
gleaming in the froth

of your mouth

 

(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Fall 2019)