Missing Truth

Free Verse

I used to be somewhere else red-white-and-blue

true, I was once a diamond throwing every hue,

and when I spoke about the move, I would run like cherry wine on cobblestones, clever heroine

I lived where blood and money overflow, remodels, getaways, unpaid work —

some call it growth, others smirk;

I’m prone to boredom but my ink dries slow and desiccates from the weight

of glittering facades

Why not change my name, I can’t relate — who the hell do posers like that think they are?

I don’t need papers to rearrange myself and I don’t want fame, yet friends

knew me when I was a prism seconds from collapse

high up on a shelf, carving twists and turns to dark romance, drawn in landscapes on the moors

the essence of a second chance seeping through the floors

in liquid glass —

I’m in pieces as a little shard

left behind, on poker night or drowned in potluck slices of sweaty afternoons, sorting through

thrift store kaleidoscopes for the kids. My acquaintances

meet someone unknown, with a spyglass for a heart. Did I leave myself

somewhere else, or is this life not mine alone?