Tattle
When I say that water
gives us away,
this is what I mean—
that I can trace your years
through the dried
runnels and splotches.
Your most tender days,
when the street artist
dappled your embrace
with old watercolors and
alley-water, the yellow
of the corner’s lamppost
light browning at the edges
like toast. And ten
years later, when your grandchild
pressed spit into the red
of the night,
deepening the dye cradling
your husband’s head. And last
year, when your tears
rewet his suit jacket, drops
cauliflowered out to blue-grey
bursts, just like his
cancer in its final stages.
When I say that water
gives us away,
this is what I mean—
that like pain, it dries and
becomes wet again,
leaves one mark, and then another.
