I Gave You

Don't give it all up, little bub. Some New Year's colors in the sky, a girl between my knees sitting on the bottom of a kayak with lights reflecting in her eyes...

I gave you crooked walks
And twisted fingers
Dancing geese in milk shadows on your skin
Fingered your teeth
Kissed the hole where the doctor’s broke your jaw
I gave you a little kid’s insight
Didn’t care for fuck about who I was insulting
Mad river logic from the mouth of a fish
While rich people popped fireworks and laughed
Their colors on the water
The sounds of someone else’s life
Your hair in my face
Touched your knee beneath the blankets and felt the shock of your love
Doozie as it was
As it was
You cried into my chest in the hospital
When no one else was there
All was broken
As it was

I gave you eternal youth
In all its grotesqueness
You remember it happening one way
And I remember it another
I gave you something, right?

You gave me pink underwear
And eight hundred and forty eight days.

12.2011