nostalgia is
summer rain,
like distant footfalls on the floor below.
darkness,
a baby monitor,
wood stoves.
beads of grass inching their way down a stem
like sweat on the forearm of a body trying.
unlike foamed milk and flowers in the field,
that just are.
branches knocking politely against white paned windows,
farmhouse siding
and deciding to run
to the kitchen for maple syrup-covered moon cakes.
nostalgia is you
saying I’m too old to wear pink plastic princess heels
or to be picked up in the park,
to have my table grapes cut in half and peeled,
or to run frantically from monsters in the dark.
what I am saying is you
were, for a short time,
a double line through a test window,
for a week or two, you were
a double-lined mask,
a slip of fortune
from an eaten cookie.
you were
litany on a spoon,
a serving suggestion,
fairytale blend:
calendula flower, lavender,
oat straw, lemon balm,
chamomile, red clover, meadowsweet.
pour 6 ounces of almost boiling
water over
one tea
spoon of herbs,
steep 8 - 10 minutes.
strain. burn your tongue
immediately
you were
the drizzling heat of a crackling wood stove,
deep piercing orange of a baby flame’s light,
and the long sun, falling sadly upon mountains
in the blue cold of winter.
its daggers pierced bright
bleeding white peeking through the ice shadows
hanging from the tops of the swings from their knees, hair down,
their long pale strands unwavering in the wind,
the blood rushing to their heads.
they wouldn’t know this would be the last time
they would be here, in this space,
the last time they would be like this,
upside down, clinging together by intermolecular forces,
friends near,
knees growing numb,
bent from vessels and gravity.