find love through your local goodwill
poem no. 1
I want you to go back to Goodwill
and retrieve that photo of the crane.
I want you to repeat the story of how you went to buy it —
how it shattered into voxels of glass,
hundreds of them,
before you could even pull out your wallet.
I want you to tell me that story a hundred times,
even if it broke,
even if you couldn’t recover its physical frame.
It was the thought contained —
the hope of it.
Had the photo of the Japanese crane,
so serene, and secretly selected for me —
been transferred into my hands,
received by a heart,
jaded by one sidedness—
Oh!
How that could have softened me.
How even shattered cuts of glass
have a restorative power in themselves,
and your casual telling of it.
Would I have had the same courage?
To buy the person, I fancy, a crappy photo frame —
from the Goodwill?
My attempts over the last week to dilute your story —
dismiss your romantic gesture —
oh so illusory —
no way you could have been that precise —
the photo of the crane —
symbolic to me —
wisdom and longevity.
How to acquire these things?
Would take an entire lifetime it seems —
the wisdom to wholly accept,
you would buy me a token of serenity.
And so I welcome this
with that scary vulnerability.
Tell me the story again —
how you thought of me.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so afraid —
to initiate contact —
and believe we are deserving of love—
That maybe this time it would last.
-sr
