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’

—

My eBooks of poetry and romance are available at Etsy – please visit my page:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/OctoberRoadPublish