Steven Harz Music

Cereal box decoder ring

Your pink pillow now missing

had been inside an invisible box

with a Crayola note on the back of

a love letter treasure map

saying something about

‘in case of emergency’

So I go to my drawer and find my

cereal box secret decoder ring

to decode your internal scars

And for external scars I use a

toy store telescope

backwards because they’ll look smaller

Forgotten wounds are rediscovered

with a cracked and dusty crystal ball

from a back of the closet toy box

To uncover hidden clues I put your

abandoned diary in a

Close ‘n Play phonograph and

listen to the silence

To learn from tears you have left as a wake

I move weightlessly across black water

like Jesus or a bug

And when I reach the other shore

with a dime store shovel and pale

I dig where the X marks the spot

In a loose dirt shallow grave is a

Peter Pan treasure chest

I flip the latch and open the lid

to find your pink pillow case

empty except for my old Magic 8 Ball

that quietly says to me

‘Reply hazy, try again’

—

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