Wear White
Is it so hard for you
to wear white
once a year?
Once a year? For coffee? Is that so hard?
You are twelve and blonde.
Not yellow-sun-corn-blonde. Not Hollywood blonde.
Not pancake or butter blonde
or golden retriever or screaming neon Vegas blonde.
Just your blonde. Which my mother said was honey.
Your eyes are still the deep wood, fallen tree brown
of something permanent yet soft. The soil
at the base of the stone wall where we dug with our hands
and buried a cigar box time capsule.
You have the map. It is folded up inside your copy of
"Pilgrim’s Progress."
You have the map.
You always had the map.
Your hair has not been blonde for twenty years.
Once when we met for yearly coffee
your eyes were blue
and I nearly [here we will spare the reader
the melodramatic spew, the pseudo-trauma that is,
frankly, pitiful and sad].
Frigging contact lenses.
We held hands twice.
We never kissed.
I once watched you while you slept.
And later, much later, while indulging chemical vice
while at college, I relived that watchful moment.
But that time the half-hour stretched out to a hundred years.
I watched your hair go dark.
Honey, nutmeg, leather, tea.
It shortened, straightened, became proper.
You grew heavy. First with age and then with children.
Lines on your face. Lines on your hands.
Email is so much easier than phone calls.
I can bring myself to type the words,
"Wear white."
I could never bring myself to say.
I always get there early. You know that, right?
At least a half hour. The waiting gives me pain.
What will have changed? What new pages
will the hand of Brother Death have turned down now?
Will he have marked a chapter on your son? How
old is he? What marks in school? What kind of boy?
Or on your job? Your health? Your art? Your man?
You are twelve and honey blonde.
With dirt under your fingernails. White shorts.
White gym socks. White Keds. White t-shirt that says,
"I’m a Pepper."
The waiting gives me pain. I would show up
even earlier. If I were brave.