I Thought of You Today [poem]
for countervalue , aokiyai , mochismo , toko_shie and all the other friends I've had to leave behind:
I thought of you today
I woke up, brushed my teeth, stood at the sink
And I thought of you
Your hands beside mine - vying for the stream of water
Our shirts were soaked, our fingers coloured with paints
(though we’d both already been nine)
And we’d turned to each other with identical grins
Before I’d plastered your hair to your face with pink soap.
The garden is fine in the mornings;
Beanstalks sway in the wind
And there - those are the roses you pricked your arm on
As you rooted about below for earthworms
- and oh the scolding my mother gave you for the words you used!
White flowers blossom now between the raspberry leaves:
It’ll still be some months until the time
Your face would light up like a child’s
When I walked in with plastic boxes of red berries.
The wind picks up - a good kite flying wind.
Do you remember that time on the beach
when you chased the trailing thread
and laughed helplessly as it danced beyond your reach?
I pause; shoes squeaking on the linoleum that line the aisles.
This is the cereal (although the box has changed a little)
That you would have every morning
And bring to school for afternoon snack.
There’s the apple juice we both drank so much of
We got sick of it and pretended that it was pee.
The setting sun had always been your favourite
(though you liked to pause on the way home
and tilt your head upwards at straggling clouds
and remark that the sky was beautiful in all its colours)
You claimed you liked the colours;
the oranges mixed in with the pinks,
and then you laughed and said wasn’t purple my favourite?
But as I blink towards my brightening window,
I remember you once said
(when your warmth had been pressed tight against me
and your fingers played lightly against mine
while your words blew hair away from your face)
That maybe, this sort of new day was good too.
You know,
I thought of you yesterday,
And today I think I shall think of you too.
I thought of you today
I woke up, brushed my teeth, stood at the sink
And I thought of you
Your hands beside mine - vying for the stream of water
Our shirts were soaked, our fingers coloured with paints
(though we’d both already been nine)
And we’d turned to each other with identical grins
Before I’d plastered your hair to your face with pink soap.
The garden is fine in the mornings;
Beanstalks sway in the wind
And there - those are the roses you pricked your arm on
As you rooted about below for earthworms
- and oh the scolding my mother gave you for the words you used!
White flowers blossom now between the raspberry leaves:
It’ll still be some months until the time
Your face would light up like a child’s
When I walked in with plastic boxes of red berries.
The wind picks up - a good kite flying wind.
Do you remember that time on the beach
when you chased the trailing thread
and laughed helplessly as it danced beyond your reach?
I pause; shoes squeaking on the linoleum that line the aisles.
This is the cereal (although the box has changed a little)
That you would have every morning
And bring to school for afternoon snack.
There’s the apple juice we both drank so much of
We got sick of it and pretended that it was pee.
The setting sun had always been your favourite
(though you liked to pause on the way home
and tilt your head upwards at straggling clouds
and remark that the sky was beautiful in all its colours)
You claimed you liked the colours;
the oranges mixed in with the pinks,
and then you laughed and said wasn’t purple my favourite?
But as I blink towards my brightening window,
I remember you once said
(when your warmth had been pressed tight against me
and your fingers played lightly against mine
while your words blew hair away from your face)
That maybe, this sort of new day was good too.
You know,
I thought of you yesterday,
And today I think I shall think of you too.