97 Memory poems

I owe you an explanation. My first memory isn’t your own of an empty box. My babyhood cabinets held a countlessness of cakes, my backyard rotted into apple glut, windfalls of money-tree, mouthfuls of fib. At puberty I liked the locks, I was the one who made them fast. The yelling in our hallways was about lost money, or lost love, but not lost life. Or so I see it now: in those days I romanticized a risk (I thought I’d die in the alcoholic automobile, die at the hands of nerveless dentistry). Small hearts were printed in the checkbook; when my parents called me dear, they meant expensive. Where were you in all that time? Out looking for your father’s body? Making for your mother’s room? I got my A’s in English, civics, sweetness and light; you got black eyes, and F’s, and nowhere fast. By 1967 when we met (if you could call it making an acquaintance, rape) I was a mal-adjusted gush, a sucker for placebos. Walking home from Central Square, I came to have the good girl’s petty dread: the woman to whose yard you dragged me might detect us, and be furious. More than anything else I wanted no one mad at me. (Propriety, or was it property, I thought to guard: myself I gave away.) And as for you, you had the shakes, were barely seventeen yourself, too raw to get it up (I said don’t be afraid, afraid of what might happen if you failed). And afterwards, in one of those moments it’s hard to tell (funny from fatal) you did a terrible civility: you told me thanks. I’ll never forget that moment all my life. It wasn’t until then, as you were sheathing it to run, I saw the knife.

I was young in these photos younger than i remember being and smiling in a way that was easy then everyone in old photos looks younger than they felt at the time

We went to that bar the one from before i went alone on purpose it's just a bar now which is what i needed to know it's just a bar

I found an attic box with report cards and drawings and a ribbon from a race i won i was a child someone kept these things carefully, on purpose that gets me every time

i was someone before you i keep forgetting that there was a whole person going places and having opinions i'm still here i'm going to get back to her

My father's watch is on my dresser i don't wear it it's not really my style but it's his and he's not here so it's mine to keep

When i was eleven i wanted to be a marine biologist then an astronaut then a chef now i'm a project manager and a father of three i'm okay with the second one