Popsicle Poetica

Sunshine Lately

If I wrote a poem about
my devastation,
I’d describe it as the pink popsicle
I licked to the stick six years ago.
How it rewarded the persistence
of my tongue with a riddle, how
I’ve never been able to stop my mouth
from drawing questions
out of sweetness. It’s devastating
how the riddle is long
forgotten, how the popsicle might not
have ever been the flavor
I remember.
It’s tragic, that memory,
because I think we were happy
that day.
It’s tragic, that memory
is all we ever have left of a thing, especially
when history isn’t written
by the victors after all, but by our denial
which sinks to the bottom of the belly,
like some sediment of grief.
I want to believe I loved him well
before I devastated him.
I want to believe the way something tasted
could be more important
than the way it decomposed.
But somewhere, there’s a stick I licked, decaying,
piled low in a Louisville landfill,
and somewhere, there’s a man I love
who remembers everything differently
than I do.