I remember holding stones
Crying dirt as red as tears
Laughing lives as dear as worlds
Baby you can cry after everyone’s gone home
I remember holding stones
Loving lives as dear as worlds
Crying dirt as gray as pain
Baby you can cry after everyone’s gone home
She had swirled in a dish by the sink
bathroom soaps shaped like roses.
Lines of dirt where people been washing they’re hands over and over, trying to stay clean.
So many years, so many soaps.
After she died and he had the house all to himself, the soaps were gone.
Replaced
with one old bar of soap.
Where did her soaps go with her dirt
in the etches of their petals?
Soap roses and plastic swans, plastic swans with bubble bath. Important.
Pale Purple, Pink and Lemon plastic swans
now sitting empty on the edge of the porcelain bathtub.