The Hopscotch Girls
Brandon Cook
They do not see me looking down from my window to the ground,
And when I sit back on my couch in the slant of the yellow sun
I come undone:
Their voices, muffled through the window, and the rhythm of their jumping find me
And remind me of growing up:
We all thought the mystery that entraps us now we would solve by lunch
We had a hunch, so how could we not fully comprehend, in the end,
The shape of all things to come?
An airplane passes overhead, and the sound of a running faucet three floors up
Makes the afternoon merge to a small, thin point
A sigh
A regret
A cigarette
A memory of what might have been
A piece of paper on the wind
A trinket falling from my hand
A morning dawning once again
Once you have learned the lesson the you are very small
Then you can be caught up in the new day, and make your way
But not before
Only after can you merge into the point of light
That comes with the sound of the hopscotch girls
The blue above them and me, impenetrable to any fuselage, is unpierced in its perfection
It will not brook any secret to fall from its wide hands
Yet it will let the sound of water fall from its sky
And give you air and wine to drink: the resurrection and the life