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