Outgrown Endings

The five-year-old or the lizard brain--perhaps both together--
Are creeping across the carpet with me, like an Escher/Scooby-Doo self-portrait.

Flip-flops slap-squelch through each flat-nubbed square.
Library patrons shift, sunlight coils in corners.

Who deserves...how do we--how do I--steal it out?

We are sneaky-polite while the books are sleeping
Stiff-spined under institutional lights.

No one talks about it anymore, outgrown in the dirty fallout
Of the brand-new, tossed out with the packaging.

Here...where the collection lies comatose beside the windows,
Perhaps here it can be stolen, like a cup from a hoard.

There are rumors. Like a the noise of being quiet.

For the a/c tech on the graveled tar of the roof, bright melon shirt
Gleaming above the brick railing in the afternoon pipe-glare.

Technicians search that rippling sun-pond for proof of failure
Not for heat lake larvae, who feed on hopes of rain and shade.

Who swim from mirage to mirage, if you believe afterimages.

Happy ends might hatch full-grown from the skimming wishes
But not for those of us wading in sunlight and shade.

What it takes to catch a dream the glare inscribes in your blink
Is a net fine enough to sieve the hope from the sighs.

The following was composed for Poets United Poetry Pantry #401 and The Sunday Muse The Muse #3. And after I flipped a hammock backwards owing to an inability to calculate fulcrums properly. Anyway, it's been that kind of a day so a poetry break is welcome.

Hope you're having a good weekend & have a great week! Thanks for reading.

-- Chrissa