Look here
She said, extending her
arm
A side-eye swipe
Peripheral vision

I am
I said, turning my
head
Obedient, obsidian
My lights were out.

This town was crafted by
Fairies and Men.
The ones behind flowerpots
Left perfume on the blueprints
and I
like it, quite honestly
the quaint artifice
It’d not be strange to see
A housewife wrapped in
a spring-breeze dress and
Yanking on Billy
Tilly
or Tom
going to the bakery for a
dozen cookies that she’d
pile on a plate
with careful precision to
keep corners from crumbling
like she’d made
them
And I think
that is this place.

So here
I begin
stabbing a finger at
crumbling brick
The swift
Nothingness
of it
berates me

That’s where I
went to pretend
in shades of
Knights and
Dungeons

I am too old
to be
picking up this sword
Again.

Her mouth is grim
Upturned
I find her lips
Vapid
in the way they
lock and refuse
to open

She nods
a two-three step
Acknowledgement
I guess.

And here
says I
Pointing to a
lit marquee
(they kept the lights going but
don’t show any movies

it looks pretty)
Where I saw my first
Love scene
And giggling
I am in that pilled and
sour seat

They left the plastic letters up
from the last showing and they
spell out
Despicable M
sans E
and their popcorn was
always stale
but tasted like
Community, I tell her
how we all turned out on
the final night
before it closed how
the age-withered women
biddied together
to talk about the
old actors they’d paid
twenty-five cents to see

There were runs in
the carpet and it was
plush
even on
Shoed feet.

She steps on a crack in the sidewalk
But I toe my way past
The wives’ tales of childhood
Drummed up to make us
Absolute in our footing and
Well,
I want to tell the
Drugstore
Water Department
Insurance
Florist
men
It has.