I.

I remember when we would sit in the swing on the back porch. you would tap your foot on the ground and push us back, anchor again on the concrete to propel us forward. The lack of WD40 would leave only squeaks and clanking of ice cubes in the air. When the air was only hot, thick with summer. When cares would pass like meal times, when nothing said meant everything was already said.

***

Now I fear the silence, the clanking only brings thoughts of impending conversations. I once was blind, but now I see, and now that sight feeds a regret in me. Time whisks by with the great-grans, their energy shakes me to the present. Here, now, I think about then.

***

I remember when we would sit in at church and pinch balls of lint off the pews. When you were baptized in the echos of my sister’s song, lingering to wash everyone in that building with innocence. I see you coming out of the chlorine each time you raise your head from a blessing, only to drip back into your dinner time coffee. clink clink. Before each meal, I wonder not only how to finish all the food, but how words that have lost all meaning find there fullest place falling from your mouth.

***

And I’m back. To the swing, moving with the swelling of prayer, the day. My decay and praise of whatever is not the thought or word but the deliverance.

II.

I worry when you bend, do you do the same? 

I wonder if you’re worried about my bend.

Stressed to the point of breaking.

Vulnerability makes us beautiful.

Don’t you think?

Or is it the flaw we live our lives to purge?