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