you were a book
before you became a tower

you sang at the top
of your lungs

in an outsized hoop skirt
while I rolled out

the reclaimed red
and black carpet

of our deeper learning
and now indecipherable equations

shelves and shelves
of color coded spine art

an older woman tentatively plays
the first notes

to Bridge Over Troubled Water
on a baby grand

a child builds a robot at home
the way I once built

my dearest imaginary friend
and her sunken garden

inside an Indiana ditch
from a patch of ditch weed

little did I know what I would be
ditching when the song came to an end

as the steel railing shimmered
beneath a sinking sun

and you and I continued to read
the sleeve liner notes in silence