Memorial Day

MEMORIAL DAY

Do you remember...?
Broad brushstrokes
lashing from vacant eyes;
stolen from smooth bronze
Skin?

Do you remember...
A smiling, seated Buddha
tossing you a skinny ball
From days before the child’s
eggshell castle was
too crowded?

Empty shell of metal film
pounded into fingertips near
skin, withered and blackened,
fragile, but untorn.

That painter’s hand is a mummified ghost
of silenced flesh and unkind corrosions;
the stone, overhead,
left him, your living
curse.