WHAT THE SUN
SEES
When I told you before that had I been
swept out
before I had the chance to belong to a
family,
the sun would have an urge to rush upon
my face—
I wasn't being entirely truthful. Today
the sun was behaving
as usual, feeding trees and drying
ducks,
and it said things to me with its light
that it remembered
having seen. Through the window it saw
me young,
bathing and splashing rowdily
with the neighbor girl. A few years
later, it reddened
my face as we broke into the concession
stand
at the empty baseball field and burnt
popcorn.
The time we called 911 from the park
payphone
and blamed it on a first-grader, it
remembers
that, too. It remembers everything it
touches. I've kept
my curtains shut so
many days to be private. It assumes.
Brett Elizabeth Jenkins