For Jeff
Michelle Orabona
1
Do you remember that time?
hours after breakfast when you were a white, middle class child stuck at the mall while your mother measured your little sister’s feet. And when she refused to buy you a Cinnabon you thought you were literally going to die of starvation, right there, on the scratchy grey carpet at Stride Rite? That is how it feels without you
now.
2.
I am happy I made you happy.
For a little while.
Happy for the bright
yellow birds
that nested in your chest,
growing large on love.
Happy for the eggs laid in
left ventricle, right ventricle,
right atrium, left atrium,
incubated in the warm flow of blood,
soothed by the steady beat
of a heart that knows it is safe
till two
became twelve
became twenty.
Happy for that moment when
I burned bright in your eyes
illuminating an unknown emptiness and filling it at the same time.
The birds flew south for winter but they remember where they were born.
3.
There are songs I do not like but
I let them play because I know
the words and it feels good to sing.
Is that what
loving
me
was like for you
?