The road split, and I missed that turn miles ago. . .

Last night I rocked on the front porch swing
perfectly in time
with the drip of melting ice
and tried to take a picture of the street light
shining through the ice glaze on the tree,
but couldn't do it justice in the dark
with a feeble camera flash,
so I resigned to drink up all the beauty
that I could with my eyes,
to store for later,
for I will surely need the sight
of ice-covered branches gleaming
with yellow light
through the dark and the mist and the smoke
of my cigarette
some night when I forget why, as a child,
I told my father I would always love snow
and ice-glazed branches that sparkle.

This morning as the sky turned
from black to gray as I sat
awake in the kitchen,
I thought the back yard looked
like a movie set,
a diorama, a barely-beleivable backdrop,
a Dhali painting, vivid and surreal.
"Ever feel all day
like you're in a surrealist painting?"
She asked one day in high school.
"Of course," I answered. Not that strange events
happenned all day, we agreed,
just that everything around us, the rows
of mud-brown lockers, the red, rubber track,
the repeated shapes in the chain-link fence,
were so familiar it was bizarre.
And we were each watching, seated
in a chair behind our eyes
and looking out them like windows,
a thin pane of glass separating us
from everything we saw and heard that day.

I broke formation
at marching band practice
to wipe a tear from her delicate cheek
with my clumsy thumb.
It was all I could do.
And I loved her sullenness, her reticence,
how we had a furtive glance
for every shared feeling. And sentences
never needed to be finished.

The intricate brass harmonies
and driving bass
emanating from my car stereo
recalled to me those days
of unfinished sentences
And un-self-conscious dancing
and midnight walks
to nowhere in particular.
Before the constant gray bags
under her eyes,
before I was the one curled up
in a ball on the bathroom floor,
crying and bleeding.
And the rest of them would make me laugh
as best they could.
It was all they could do.
And they loved me despite,
but she just loved me.
Back when wearing our gawdy,
polka-dotted dresses to school
was reason enough to get out of bed
and suffocating despair
reason enough not to,
but we always did.

What maudlin troubles greived us then
yet how bleak
and beautiful those days still seem
even viewed through a lense
clouded with memories
of things I hope she never sees.
I called her from a pay phone
bolted to the painted cinderblock wall
of the psych ward at a rural hospital,
shivering in my bleach-faded scrubs
and slipper socks.
Miles of dead grass
and bent corn stalks between us,
she listened uncomfortably
to my numb, breahty voice
and broken sentences.
It was all she could do.
And all I could do
Was read Fried Green Tomatos and dream
of the day
when Towanda would possess me.

What pain I thought I had and how I ran,
hollow-eyed with poison in my blood,
and how lovely this damp night seems
and how beautiful my breath
dissolving in the air
and how precious the glow
of the streetlight on the melting ice.
I think she'd agree.
Still, to this day
I never told her.
Better left unspoken, like this scene
is better left unphotographed.
I won't forget, for she,
unlike the ice and snow
was all silver lining.