Saiz

Oh, Leslie, I have your voice as if in a jar, like butterfly or gold fish - like some insect or some fish to look at - to watch swim about or flap about whenever I wish.

I have your voice to listen to, to look at, to savor whenever I wish.

I have your voice in a dish - like Jell-O, like ice cream, like TCBY.

I can eat it with dessert spoon, my tears falling in it, added to it, because, though hearing from you is a drop of rain, I want to be drenched in the rain, caught without umbrella, without cab to get home, you falling on me - on everything, over everywhere.

Remember you and me and Reina, in Havana, chatting, walking together, Stephen and who else was it, who all else, after dinner, somewhere way behind?

Did the rain not begin to fall? How warm your eyes were. How warmed was I always when you smiled.

Habana Libre, like a great big woman for me to run to away from you. In what direction was happiness? How torn I was, like paper - on it, a poem life itself was writing, wrestling to get right.

I am a little boy, this assignment in a book for you to mark.


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2008
4:55 p.m. 07.07.08