I am the sweat in your eye blinding you for a second

Causing you to pull the trigger.

I am the rock in your shoe that finally makes you

Give up your lead in the marathon.

Kiss first place goodbye.

I taste like acid indigestion inching up your throat

When your boss says,

“Looks like you’ll need to put in a few extra hours this week.”

And you think, “Again?”

And you say, “That’s it.”

I am all the places your lover doesn’t touch you.

Your arm, your stomach, your thigh.

When he says, “No. Not tonight.”

And you curl inside your doubt like an ugly snail.

I am the moment the silk and lace feel ludicrous,

Laughing on your skin.

When your mother questions your career as a nurse,

Says that your one friend is using you for your money,

Tells you you’re not chopping the tomatoes right,

That’s when I show up.

The knife dances in your shaking hand.

You put it down.

You exit the kitchen. The house. The life.

I catalyze the end of something great.

I cause the beginnings of something better.

On one, the hankerchief girl greedily smooches

The cheek of the boy who has the look of a yodeling enthusiast.

When she makes her move,

A ball of yarn falls out of his knapsack,

And the flowers move to dodge it.

On the other, an even younger boy points at two honeybees

While a chubby-kneed toddling girl swings a bushel of flowers behind her back.

My mother was forever buying four of everything—

Two big. Two small. Man, woman, boy, girl.

When she was in seventh grade,

She whispered to her stepfather

That she was going to marry Richie, that nice boy from downstairs.

Years later, she assured Richie that they would have a boy first,

Exactly how she’d planned it.

Then a girl.

Then they did.

We were a perfect set.

The white-wicked, never-burned candles ask,

Did she want to be the girl kissing the boy with girlish glee?

The toddler summons my babyhood’s memories,

Their last honeybee breath taken when they burned away

Alongside her ashes.

I’m burning all my candles before I die.

No wick will wait forever.

The cherub-cheeked girl will always hang back from the threat of stings,

The little guy will always have his head towards the clouds,

And the other two will always be striking up an unlikely romance.

They never got to glow with flame.

We never got to see her eyes light up, holding our family

In Deutsche-kind miniature within her hands.

So tonight, I’m lighting the house on fire with the glow

Of a hundred candles that I will burn

To the quick before I’m dead.

I never saw the wooden oyster open its mouth until I was 31.

When I was young, it was just another useless

Object in the junk menagerie,

And as I stood waiting in the living room for the ticker tape stock market parade

To end so I could ask permission to use the phone or watch a movie,

I pretended it was a giant walnut with its very own gavel

For reigning over the courtroom:

Peanuts on trial,

Pecans on jury duty,

Chestnuts confessing.

Or perhaps two tortoises who had found a home

Within one another.

Or perhaps the most ill-conceived deviled egg carrier in human history.

For so long, the voice of the Dow Jones Industrial Index drowned out mine.

But finally, when the house was silent,

When there were no more parades and only me,

I uncovered its nutcracker tongue, curled inside all along,

I understood the quiet years that made the hinges squeak.

And it told me how it had almost forgotten how to open,

Almost forgot why it existed in the first place.

A quick twist will send in my song,

Send in the clowns,

And I can spin around and round,

Spinning the tale of love

That didn’t work out quite right,

Your mother’s favorite tune.

Isn’t it rich? Are we a pair?

I thought that you’d want what I want, sorry, my dear.

I carry three balloons for the clowns who remain—

You, your father, your brother—

The fools who tear around in circles,

And me slowing down note by note,

Tricking you into thinking each tinny pluck

Will be my last,

Waiting by my bedside for the last breath,

But don’t be sad because

Today, in Molly’s Cupcakes

I imagined myself behind the counter,

Day after day,

Confident I would get sick of the Raspberry Beret,

Sure that they wouldn’t be a treat anymore.

Positive I would grow tired and bored with them.

Convinced I’d start to unlove my favorite chocolate one.

I drove home to the man I’ve pledged my days after days to,

My months after months.

My years after years.

I in my moonbright dress,

And you in wrinkled starlight—

We’ll throw those sunshine dice

And watch each other’s kaleidoscope hearts

Shiver out of a lace cocoon

Woven from winedream nights and flowercrown dawns

And emerge, waltzing

In perfect firefly rhythm.

Grandma was never as jolly and plump as me.

She called you her angels,

But I saw you steal cookies when she wasn’t looking.

Did you visit her only because of her candy jars?

These coal eyes know black and white, good and bad, naughty and nice.

Bless your heart, dear. Lifting her onto the toilet

When you were eight years old was great practice

For when you had to do the same for your mother

Twenty years later

In the same cramped bathroom.

I’ve brought a gift for you.

But it’s hidden from the children, the angels.

Come closer. Closer, til you can smell the death of gingerbread.

These Santa Claus betrayals must be whispered, after all.

Are you ready? No, you’re not.

No one ever is ready, old enough, wise enough

To say good-bye to their parents.

I am the ironic confetti at the lung cancer party.

My black-lined cagebar eyelashes fluttered at you seductively.

Got a light?

For you, I’ve got thousands.

My smoke clouded up the one thing you wanted to tell you daughter

Before you died—

That you were in the business of saving.

That she should trade in the barcode collection to get a free tote bag

To carry around your ashes in.

Being rescued is just a carton away.

I am a home and not.

My fingerprints’ whorls

Carry the scent of cardamom for gingerbread,

The scratchiness of the record she only played for the holidays,

The jangle of the keys when he arrived home smelling of sweat and money.

I carry you as you’re lifted out of the car at the end of the night

To be tucked in, snug as a bug in a rug. Good night.

Oh, you’re awake?

Blow out you room’s lamp from your bed.

One, two, see? It’s out. Magic.

But you can’t touch it—

Remember, I’m not here.

I am the home-shaped hole you work to fill

For the rest of your life.

Year 2057 showcased the heyday of the negative definition.

History books were filled with the events that didn’t happen.

Stories only focused on what wasn’t said.

Poems were made up of the words the author decided not to use,

And I continued to spend my days not dating you.