JEAN STAPLETON PLAYS THE PIANO

I wish I could tell them

they’re missing it.

 

Contoured faces facing screens,

chasing likes and 

views.

Accolade figments, lost pigments

imbued

            in grey.

 

But I grew in color.

And my memories reflect the winding rhymes,

poetic times of my history,

the mystery,

& all that teen angst.

 

I think back and say thanks

 

to odd alleyways

we’d park in crooked ways,

​

sit in places 

that weren’t spaces

rounding bases.

 

I was the car worth last pennies

speeding you clear out the town that never saw you, 

with besties in the back that you never see now.

​

Me, gloss-lipped, Pink-Sugared 

in the front passenger seat 

marked “reserved”.

 

On hoods. 

In lots.

Hot summer nights.

The Making [of] Plans for Nigel 

in basement bars that wouldn’t dare serve us.

But we served relentless…

               flat-ironed locks

          denim-hugged hips

    All-Starred soles and eyeliner smudged

in all the right places,

​

like your hands upon my 

unblemished skin in your backseat.

Fly as all the fucks we never gave

while skirting sex, 

wet with sweat

like condensated windows.

 

I miss it.

And parts of me would sell soul shards 

to revisit a season 

where I had everything

 

             and nothing

 

                                 at all.

​​

If I could, 

I would to them say:

“don’t welcome winter without reveling in your spring-sprung spectral bloom.”

        

         Because grey

         

         is way

                   overrated. 

 

And if they’d wash it all off 

and raise a fresh face to the sun,

they’d surely see the light

 

                                         in more ways than one.