How They Leave

Dressed in black, smelling of smoke
Looking back with a feeble joke
Professing a life without any strings
Stumbling a little, forgetting their things
With a smile and a keepsake in their sack
A wink and a promise that they'll be back
Celebrating their deeds, confessing their sins
Pretending not to care to meet again
Wishing they'd gotten to know you better
Listing your faults in a three-page letter
A smile, a kiss, and a pat on the head
With kind post mortems and cheeks of red
Writing your number in a special book
Asking for copies of the pictures you took
Caressing that spot where the sun burned your skin
Begging a tale of what might have been
Kicking and screaming by the nape of the neck
Singing and dreaming and bouncing a check
Chased by a bee over a hummock
Dissolved with a pea in the walls of a stomach
With noisy exhaust, scaring the birds
Describing a frost and forgetting the words
Beating their wings and dodging a cloud
Building a mall on the field that you plowed

©1998 Evan Hause