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 the

odd alleys 

where we’d park in crooked ways,

sit in places 

that weren’t spaces

rounding bases.

 

I was the car worth last pennies

driving you clear out of a town that never saw you, 

with besties in the back; 

                                      the ones you never see now.

​

The gloss-lipped, pink sugared girl

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.