Designed to fail

And so I befriended a little boy

and he trusted me and I him.

We’d tell each other stories

from our day;

mostly true,

some pretend.

He told me of the backyard,

the dirt world,

the little berms of daisies

and snail swirled ponds.

And I gave him my wisdom

of the grown-ups:

how we think that they’ll

never lie or let us down,

but inevitably they do;

they’re designed to.

And in that moment

of disappointment,

we bow to them,

and acknowledge

their broken muddiness,

as also our own.

Later, I heard that his family

was moving away.

I didn’t know where.

I stood on their vacant lawn,

trying to remember my number

to leave for him on a receipt,

a cookie fortune in my pocket,

a cracked toy tractor plastic piece.

It began to snow and I still could not

write the number where I could be

reached in case of emergency.

Even if I did remember,

wouldn’t it get left behind,

somehow, only to become

a scooting gutter canoe

in the thaw.

 Oh how, oh how

I didn’t want to let go

the sticky frog summer

of his smile

when he saw me.

 Oh how, oh now

to know

a phone line would never come

close enough

to save me.