Playground Ruins

 

The swingset is rust now.

Grass eats at the slide
where once we burned our thighs in summer.
Children play here still,
but they are not us.
They will never be us.

We used to dig holes with sticks,
pretend we were explorers.
Now the holes are filled,
the explorers buried
under tax forms and traffic lights.

I walk past the playground
like one walks past an old lover:
half-aching,
half-ashamed.
Because I know what it gave me,
and what it took away.

The innocence of believing
adults knew what they were doing.
The cruelty of being laughed at
for shoes not branded enough.
The confusion of first love
disguised as playground dares.

Every laugh is still lodged in the soil.
Every cruelty too.
The earth keeps them both,
refusing to choose.

Inheritance of Silence

Families are not only made

of blood and furniture.

They are made of silence—
the lullabies that stop,
the rooms where arguments
stay trapped in the wallpaper.

As children we waited.
Headlights on the street meant love,
keys in the lock meant safety.
Later they waited for us—
dinners cooling on tables,
eyes glancing at doors
we would not open.

This is the cycle:
from waiting to being waited for,
from play to avoidance,
from worshipping faces
to avoiding their gaze.
Not cruelty—
just the orbit of life
repeating itself.

And still,
their absence shapes us.
We inherit their unfinished sentences,
their unsaid apologies,
their stubborn love.
We inherit silence
as surely as we inherit hair color.

 “The Hours We Misplaced”

I kept a jar of hours once,
each one a small, bright stone.
I swore I’d build a road with them—
but my hands grew tired,
and the jar grew light.

Now the path lies somewhere else,
trampled by grass I do not know.
When I reach for the stones,
I find only dust,
soft as breath, gone as quickly.

Still, I hear them sometimes—
the laughter pressed inside a wall,
the footsteps folded into dusk.
They call, but not for me.

The hours are not cruel;
they are simply gone.
It is only I who lingers,
a shadow standing in the place
where the road never was.

Before the flash

 

"Before the Flash"

I don’t remember the moment,
but my body does.
The warmth of your arm, the careful grip,
like holding something precious
you weren’t sure how to keep.

They say I cried before this picture,
my curls stuck damp on flushed cheeks —
but then you lifted me,
wrapped me in your still-shirted arms
like a meeting between
office hours and lullabies.

You smiled for the flash.
I didn’t.
Not yet. Because even then,
I think I knew:
this wasn’t forever.

Not the clean white couch,
not the golden lamp above,
not even us.

You, with your CEO calm,
smelling of ink, leather, and airport mornings,
were a giant in my baby world —
but not the one who changed my diapers
or knew the lullaby routine.

You were
“special moment” love.
Pressed shirts.
Weekend visits.
Picture-frame pride.

I was the second.
A soft echo after a job.
A daughter between love and distance,
between nursery toys and grown-up silence.

But I saw you.

Even in this photo —
one shoe falling, lip uncertain —
I wanted you to know
I was there.
Feeling everything.

Now, decades later,
I write you poems.
I call you papi.
I admire you.

But I still carry
the tiny weight of that day:
half a tear, half a hope,
and a picture
where love wore a suit
and a baby asked for more.

 LINK TO THE SILENT OBSERVER ON AMAZON --- 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FRZ2P5S2?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520