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Description
My friend,
the masses have brought flowers,
waxy pink and orange,
garish under fluorescent light.
Those terrible lilies people always bring.

In someone's borrowed aquarium
strange bulbous fish are staring
blank stares through a watery underworld.
Someone thought they would be a good idea.
Something to keep the children properly quiet.

I am talking to a fat woman.
She is wearing black and too much gold jewelry.
She says she met you a million years ago
at a convention somewhere. She wants me to tell her
how sweet you were. I say "I don't know."

I am thinking if you were here
how you would laugh at her behind your hand,
how you would pretend to have a coughing fit
("Pneumonia," you'd say, "75-year-old pneumonia,")
to politely end the conversation.

We would stand together,
shoulders hunched to look at the fish.
("Whose fish?" you'd ask. I'd shrug.)
You would be dressed in a pale blue
sweatshirt, with a hood and a pocket.

Then, when no one was looking,
we would steal the horrible hothouse flowers
and run out down the street to the park.
("Out of shape," you'd say, your head down, and I would nod.)
We would climb the hill and pant and laugh our breath back.

The grass would be cool
when we lay down on it, my dark straight hair
yours curly and white. You would point
to the silent cold wet stars.
("There's Cassiopeia," you'd say, "and Orion and the Bears and the long Milky Way.")

Description
My friend,
the masses have brought flowers,
waxy pink and orange,
garish under fluorescent light.
Those terrible lilies people always bring.

In someone's borrowed aquarium
strange bulbous fish are staring
blank stares through a watery underworld.
Someone thought they would be a good idea.
Something to keep the children properly quiet.

I am talking to a fat woman.
She is wearing black and too much gold jewelry.
She says she met you a million years ago
at a convention somewhere. She wants me to tell her
how sweet you were. I say "I don't know."

I am thinking if you were here
how you would laugh at her behind your hand,
how you would pretend to have a coughing fit
("Pneumonia," you'd say, "75-year-old pneumonia,")
to politely end the conversation.

We would stand together,
shoulders hunched to look at the fish.
("Whose fish?" you'd ask. I'd shrug.)
You would be dressed in a pale blue
sweatshirt, with a hood and a pocket.

Then, when no one was looking,
we would steal the horrible hothouse flowers
and run out down the street to the park.
("Out of shape," you'd say, your head down, and I would nod.)
We would climb the hill and pant and laugh our breath back.

The grass would be cool
when we lay down on it, my dark straight hair
yours curly and white. You would point
to the silent cold wet stars.
("There's Cassiopeia," you'd say, "and Orion and the Bears and the long Milky Way.")