Catherine
I know you loved Catcher in the Rye.
I know you were a painter of more than canvas
I know you were a victim of 90s fashion
I know you were born in February,
and that you were a fan of Nathan Lane.
The rest is a guess as good as God,
all the places we could have found ourselves
under the Heavens, but instead you found yourself there
There was never a time when I didn’t wonder how you smelled,
if it was anything like the sight of your photographs
in the sticky old volumes of my childhood
or your laughing palm in the lens of the videotapes
because your hair wasn’t right
or the back of my head to the camera
because my existence sputtered to a limp
like the time I stepped on a bee
and you weren’t there to kiss it,
when I sat putrefying in the kiddie pool soaking up time
before I even knew I was burning,
these walking photos with bigger intentions
sheltered, taught me 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and so on,
until I would reach the number of years
I’d spend tacking you on my wall, 12
carrying you in my purse, 14
walking on beehives 18+, and
until I count high enough for myself so
I’d be smelling you in my ears, to be continued.
A for What happened
B for On my first day of kindergarden
C for Catherine?
‘Cause sure as hell none of us saw it comin’.
I want you to know my favorite color is red
Not because that’s the last skirt I saw you wear pulseless
but what’s your favorite color?
I imagine it’s green, because when you mix our favorite colors
Christmas explodes from the 1995 album-
there’s you. And there’s me. In the same picture. In the same photograph.
Only, that I can remember, I’ve never felt those hands. And I’ve never seen that
smile. You are a stranger, and the fact that there was once a time when our
existences were captured in the same place leads me to absolution-
Z for You’re not a myth after all.
How different could I be now?
I’d welcome you with a hug- I know you like them, because
you do them a lot in your photographs-
and cook you your favorite dessert-
whatever that is- but I am a stranger to you too.
You don’t know anything about me either.
The rest is a guess as good as prayer.
My favorite color is red
I love sunrises and thunderstorms and leatherbound books
I also like Nathan Lane, I have your Prismacolor pencils and I cry
listening to the Faure Requiem.
And even though I learned my numbers and my alphabet alright
and even though I’ve done my damndest to know you, or the possibility of you
as hard as I could like I wish I could
and all the best karma in the world that would-
sought to somehow make your absence proud of me-
couldn’t move your palm a quarter of an inch to the right
so I could see your hair on November 6th 1990,
even though.
I miss the hell outta you.
