Terhune Visiting Hours

You’ll find me sitting out where the sun hollows the blackheads on my nose

Reminiscing next to the Sprite can that lapsed my memory moments ago, now

Decarbonated, aluminum perspiring from its mouth, seared and dented

You’ll find me reminiscing of a suburbia not quite like this

Carved wooden mantelpieces are flourishes on screen doors,

Multiplying the rectangular frame in its relentless ivy, stretching beyond the cracks

in pillars, eaves enclosing the stucco and seven-foot arches

Cross-legged as I stared at the one passage for Baba to return

Arching against the metal frame, against blood-scarlet cushions, wondering if

My teeth had shifted forward like the lady said who tilted my head back

Telling my mother I’ll enter my latter years with metal strings and rubber bands

Exhaust never delighted me until I saw two almond-shaped lights, double-folded

Eyelids greeting me with four tires then two extended forearms

Casting shadows where I once stood when the sun was high

The fresh cuts of grass curled from a midnight paroxysm

Terhune Ranch never looked more enticing for a household reeling from

A dalmatian’s absence, a bassinet where his bed was fermented with saliva 

White banisters attaching to iron railings that camouflaged with the slim-trunked trees

I watch wordless exchanges through the three-paned window out front

Most Wednesdays, but that is not the case this baby-blued morning

“Mama, can I chui paopao today?” I’d say like a sermon, frolicking my lips

With both corners to the ceiling I’d climb atop the kitchen counter to touch with a crescent nail

“Sure, baby,” and I clenched my dishsoap water in one fist, forgetting

The wand fated in the other and I bolted from the porch to the moss lining

The cobblestone setts, three supporting two, two atop one, velcro barely gripping

Onto my sneakers, lost in the televised tales I'd reenact in ballet flats

I skipped farther down the porch from where I pursued yesterday’s skeletons, hurling

Jack o’ lanterns and candy as profusely as the surfaces of my sleep allowed

I spun open the cap to the canister and took a sip of the bubbles

I never blew out and my throat churned as red as the cherry popsicle I shared

With the neighbors who graced my laughter at the end of the cul-de-sac

And my esophagus hiccuped elastic liquid before my stomach diffused the interloper

In canola oil drenched by bushels of bok choy I accumulated in my cheeks

Suppers and cardboard boxes past, my forehead greases the pans hauled onto the burner

Leaning over while dusting the sauces with dandruff flakes, garlic powder

I resented from my days performing in crumpled tulle to polyester blazers

I envelop the aroma in saran wrap from a kitchen drawer, creaked open a quarter-way

The glass clinks with the ceramic bowls that stained the Sunday newspaper

Headlining dark rings circling my temples, before I learned of nights awake in perpetuity

Before I stained my hands red with the creases between my brows

The stairwell that relieved me of my oblivion, I fall palms faced out but the riser caves in