On Your 26th Birthday
As children, we played make-believe
in the woods behind our houses.
We were explorers
in a hundred imagined, wild lands.
Just beyond the tree line,
around the creek’s curves,
an adventure was always waiting.
We perched on fallen logs and
threw sticks into the creek below,
watched them race each other
in the water’s fickle current,
laughed when one caught a rock, marooned.
As a grown-up, it can be hard
to find adventure all around
like we did as kids.
The memory of how mysterious -
and magical -
the world seemed to us then
is sometimes the closest I can get.
Even that is tainted by the loss of you.
This is my fourth poem for you.
Nearly every year, on your birthday,
I walk to a creek with flowers in hand.
The water moves the same way it always has,
even when it feels like everything has changed.
I throw the flowers like we threw the sticks,
and smile when some catch on a rock.
A quiet, sad metaphor:
You are the flowers caught in time,
now four years in my past.
I am the flowers the creek keeps,
pulled quickly around its bends.