8x10

I pass a sign on the post

It says "stuffed monkey lost"

I picture some sad face

As she twists with empty arms

And i understand cause i remember.

That october day you followed me home

And in a fit of innocence, i took you in

You were a passionate skeptic with a dimpled smile

You framed yourself so well

You were a perfect 8 x 10

And now i am alphabetizing my correspondence for some reason

And i'm guessing that's just meaning

Keeping track

Of who i've been

You know time is just a grouchy vagrant slowly slouching past

And i'm sneezing at the dust from all the things that haven't lasted

He's laughing at me, time is laughing at me,

Cause in one of my piles, you suddenly just popped up

A letter full of ellipses, like our history, all chopped up

And it says you're crying uncle

Well i was never out to pin you down

But i'm sputtering, i'm stuttering

Your words still blush me for a moment, now,

So i stick you at the back of my stacks where i file your face

In the brown box scribble-scrawled in black "things to fix, someday".

Yeah, we're wrapped in tissue paper in the attic of my mind

You and me

Like a bad homemovie,

Where the whites are sour green

And the family hovers over buttered popcorn

To fill in the details of each scene

And the tape stock in my brain sticks together

It feels so small and undignified of me to try and remember

You, jogging circles around the gas pump in september

Racing back to the car, giddy and spent

And we're kissing, kissing hard

In front of the skinny full-service attendant, frowning

Or your arms in august full of firewood,

A wildflower tucked like a cigarette behind your ear

You're some boy-girl fifties moviestar, in my feature now appearing

Or weeping on my collarbone and pounding on my chest

My half-broken heroine

My restless 8 x 10

Or that last day on the railroad tracks,

We were two little campers

We were swearing we'd write

But with the wryness of counselors

Who had watched this promise happen

Every last night

For years,

And of course we misplaced our pledges,

Folded starshaped in bookbag bottoms somewhere,

"will you remember?" "do you love her?"

Check here.

And i guess our stations changed or our volume faded

All i know is we left so different

Than we came into this,

These lifetimes choose the ones who will educate us

And i guess that's how it always is.

So i buy a pack of marlboros like i never do

And i waste six matches lighting one and think of you

Under the stoplight of this brooklyn fulton street

My anger looks so red and cheap

It just crumples up and blows away

I'm rooted to the spot, surveying its fading

My 8 x 10 is fading

I pass a sign on the post,

It says "stuffed monkey lost"

And i picture some sad face as she twists

With empty arms and i understand,

Cause i remember

The day you followed me home.