Banana Colored Cloth

Hope

Feels stretched

Like the old white shirt you

Washed too many times

And the cotton turns limp

And the red socks beat that

Hope into a bland banana color

Like birch bark flaking down around

My feet

Birch that burns and bubbles 

Up and around my hands like

Plastic gloves

A cat tail of smoke curling up

And under my mask

And settling in my throat

I feel like an old house with an unswept chimney

And the tentative tears

Fall from our eyes like leaks in the windows

But the cotton of our masks

Gutters them away

And all we see are eyes

Like breathing holes 

We poked

And the flowers we picked last March 

Stand now brittle and flaking

With the greasy pain of a page

From a textbook

And the photos we took

Are flipped through for entertainment

A movie we watch

Seeing a stranger in our clothes

Seeing the square of flesh

From the bottom lashes

To the chin

Like a rare species

Watching the photos pass on the screen

Is like watching dominoes fall

And the words I scrawled in my diary

In haste

In utter rugged speed

Now sit behind a case 

so someone unborn

can choke on them

Like a piece of banana colored cloth