Honey.
Oh, honey.
With my golden hair and sticky, summer skin,
spread me over your sweet buns and biscuits,
I dribble down your chin and onto your shirt.
I’m his honey.
His rough, painful, cough and “Hey, Honey.”
His skin deteriorates.
Blotches showing through the thin, pink tissue covering the rusty clock gears inside.
Tick tock,
Tick tock,
until one day soon,
my parents tell me,
I’ll need that black dress.
The black dress to bury
his yellow, dingy pants,
The old straw hat with a red ribbon circling around the base,
The scruffy patches of barren scalp like freshly harvested land,
Going on for miles,
And miles,
The wide eyes magnified by round-rimmed glasses,
Curious like a newborn’s
but behind them sleeps the wisdom of eighty three years.
10. 20. 30. 40. 50. 60. 70. 80.
1. 2. 3.
Fill those years with a passionate romance,
A young girl swept off her feet by a charming fellow from down south,
Where the weather’s warm but she would stay forever for him,
A Harvard education,
Four middle-aged children,
Road trips across the country,
With countless stops for sit-down meals,
because he wouldn’t stand for any fast food,
The Acuba Lane house,
The first home he made with his family,
Settling down at the head of the table,
Six grandchildren waiting with open arms,
A doctor that wouldn’t listen when he was concerned
About a growth in his cheek.
It’s nothing,
Harmless,
Don’t be concerned.
His complaints were muffled
Until it was too late.
A tree grows through his body
with roots in his face in that harmless growth.
The tree that will wind through every hole in that clock,
Tick tock,
Tick tock,
Until I kiss him goodbye for the last time,
And one little girl of six grandchildren stands in black
With rivers pouring down her cheeks,
And the clock stops ticking.