Sandboxes

We were young then
We balanced sidewalks
We were cool then and dripping wet
With our lack of common sense
Your mother measured how tall
Those marks on walls were worth their weight in gold

We were heavy
Tree branches couldn’t hold us
Teasing curfew we bought time
For the time being
We thought we knew the difference between
Swallowed whole and running reckless

And so he tasted
Your skin in sandboxes
And so he spread you flat on the ground
Like a blanket

And we walked the wrong ways and
Talked thick words
In thin places

I sat on his bedspread
He played his father’s James Taylor records
My head full of “this is the end of my life as I know it”
These words, this room, this man, these piano hands

Now our scattered
Correspondence
Will be keeping
me from clinging to you

we were young then
we were childish
carving peepholes
from our pupils