Post-It notes in the library book
that I picked off the shelf
like the prize peach off the tree,
finally ripe and ready:
graphite jottings that stuck to the Vonnegut
without much adhesive,
easily torn away and tossed
(that is their business model, after all)
but somehow still tucked in the pages,
phantom traces of a reader once upon a time
or perhaps just yesterday.
The book is mine for a month
but I’ll return it before the week is up –
before I leave again –
and for my part
I will not touch the Post-It notes
but I will not add my own.
The book slides down into the drop bin
and I watch from the parking lot as it is reshelved
and I drive away
and maybe the Post-Its are mine, now, too
or maybe I was never meant to see them.
There was a box in the kitchen
red,
paper-mached,
fragile from the start
in which I held my lollipops,
small fingers grabbing one out every so often and hiding the wrapper back inside,
a clandestine treat
and I do not like lollipops anymore
but I kept them there all the same
in case I changed my mind one day.
I came home to find
my mother had thrown it out
because
you never used it anyhow
(true)
and there are lollipops in the drawer if you want them
(I don’t)
and it was falling apart
(I know)
and I haven’t opened it in years
so I don’t care
but it’s gone
so I do.
My favorite road sign, I always said,
was the one by the pond
that signaled duck crossings
only,
long ago and before I can remember,
someone painted a saxophone onto it
so that the duck became an instrumentalist.
To the supermarket,
to ballet lessons,
to work I went,
gazing out the passenger seat window,
smiling as we passed the duck,
years of my life spent to and fro
without ever taking a photograph of it
for why would I?
It was a fixture.
I went away three months ago
and today I learned
the sign has been replaced
with a plain old duck,
restored to what must have been its
original state.
I wanted to cry right then,
to mourn the saxophone
and the music
and the duck’s way of life
and mine
but I was driving
(I can do that now)
so I had to keep my eyes forward
and keep on.
Come here, my dear,
and let me soothe the worries away.
Let me fix it all.
Let me stay on the phone
and sit with you a while
and let us pretend that I am not growing
and that it is not over
and that we are not scared
and that all is well.
Let us turn around
and drive home
and return the Post-It notes to their rightful owners
and recapture those safe, sugary days of
who knows when.
Let us find that bygone saxophone
and join it, the poor lost thing,
wherever it may be.