I hate to love to be reminded of you,
you carting around those fragile flowers in those trembling teenage hands,
fingernails cruelly cut and soiled like you’d been off digging in some foreign country’s hot volcanic sand,
smiling wearily at my wild hair, the surprise in my eyes,
fighting a flinch at my sneezes spreading thankyous all around to put your creeping pulse at ease.
I mindlessly toyed with those tiny colored cups since moved and sitting in white, chipped china on my window sill
while those hands reached out to touch, to interrupt, to tell me something urgent though in the end, it really wasn’t.
I wanted nothing more than to breathe that fragrance in, still sitting coyly in your palms,
that scent I vaguely recalled clinging closely to my next door neighbor’s lawn.
You were popping and exploding and consoling in equal measure of your youth, forming ideas about the world and what it was and would be soon,
I’d weakly start a sentence but you just couldn’t wait your turn, you harbored hope like things were easy for you, not downright crippling as they were.
in parentheses 