We smooth over the ache of the bee-sting
in the outfield in August,
and the junior high hallway heartbreak,
because they’ve become the stories we tell at parties.
Children transcend this habit.
They don’t bother to mold memory into
something better. They know that
things can hurt and things can sing
out everything within them.
They are memory perfected,
stomp-happy, beautiful in a way we forget
when we decide we care
about everyone else's stage directions.
My mother once told a little boy, ‘it’s okay, you’re just having a bad day’
and through his tears he said ‘no, I’m having a bad right-now.’
See that toddler in brown boots and a princess costume
stumble-running down the street on the first day of spring.
See her barrel towards her father, laugh-shrieking.
Remember that not all things can be recalled
in the false twilight of nostalgia.
Some things will always be that bold,
that happy, that pure,
drenched in sun and freedom.
freeform poem, May 2013
