Читать книгу Patient Zero - Tomas Q. Morin - Страница 11

CIRCUS PONY

What joy to say our short winter days

are behind us now. Gone the old life we filled

with empty laughter, the times we’d pack

the backseat with every hitchhiking clown

we happened upon — our record was eight

— until the year our fathers died. Gone

the red-nosed hours, our grotesque smiles

drawn large and wide, when we rehearsed

our cold routines of “Hey, are you okay?” and “Fine.

I’ll be fine.” Remember the long seconds — three

slow ones in all — before your face

that took an hour to apply turned grave

or the look you wore, sadder than any clown’s

in the rain, that was my cue to knit my brow

and continue fumbling with the three-sizes-too-small

hammer you handed me so I could once more fix

the swaybacked rocking horse we purchased

to ward off an unspoken future in which we

are continents apart, surrounded by our hungry

new families as we slice and dismantle

the same braised roast and lament how

we could have let hope stray, how the story

of our lives might have been different

if it had contained, however lame, something

we could have ridden into the sunset on.