8th Grade Locker Combination
If you remember the numbers now,
maybe the rest of your life will click open
on easy street: a winning lottery ticket.
Even then, when it didn't jam,
you considered yourself lucky. Saved
from humiliation, from the dreaded flicker of girls' eyes that meant something--.
Yet you didn't think then
that the locker would open
to all these riches: these woods,
this love, this child, even the deaths--
how they come to you in many forms:
wingspans radial, the heron,
the hummingbird: the whir metallic--
approaching, receding again.
7th Grade Suede Covered Journal
If you find it in the bookcase next to your half-
collection of The Babysitters Club, the rest
of your passion might crease open from
an eternal tropical themed birthday party.
Even then, when you scribbled down gossip
scraps it was guarded, discarded with a pen scratch. You can't say
whose eyes blink in the margins, changing
from green to black to blue to another blue
(your star-eyed scrawl says "periwinkle") each shining with some meaning--
When you turn the gel-penned pages
you didn't think that you would need
all these sketchy inkblots over those square dance
lessons, that sprained wrist, this pressed azalea petal,
even the solitude in so many forms:
linoleum echoes, the bread slice,
the fingerprint: your swirls inked--
un-hopscotched, blotched.
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