Goldhood

I still eat string cheese

and sit on the kitchen counter.

Toe the acorns on our driveway from the oak,

smell the rain-stained concrete and

bright green, baby grass,

regrown after the fires.

The secrets I kept as a kid –

climbing Coyote Hill at night,

playing alone by the willow and the gutter,

burying the metal charm near Fifi’s place.

They’ve become spaces in me.

Snow globe worlds, contained but always shaken,

showering everything

with a dewy hue.

The slow settling of fantasies.

It was magic to me.

The uglier side of self-love is

the creeping disappointment that comes on

like a head cold –

that no one will ever do it

quite like me.

That even the story I tell

of my engagement is

better than the thing itself.

Everything born here is gold.

Everything but the hissing yellow street lamps,

the empty cul-de-sac,

the stream of cigarette smoke,

those four murders.

Everything else.