Truth: Dusty Diary, Found in a Softball Field

Open the book, taste her smell in your memories
And just as quickly,
Shut it.
Shield your eyes.
Bound with dead
Animal skin
And filled with life;
An unnerving paradox.
Hands shaking, read the first line,
And the next,
And the next,
And it gets harder
When the little three-by-four inch square
That was engraved into your brain
Falls out
Faded yellows and de-saturated sky
Twist and turn
An autumn leaf that the book
Didn’t have a chance
To catch
Like so many others

Two kids smile back at you
From the floor

Pick them up,
Dust them off.
Their arms aren’t around each other
Now.

It was a book of astronomy,
But the only thing you read
Was
Just about a shooting star.
Stuck in the Perseids.