I had never heard the word before.
And there he was, biggest person in the whole house,
a red thunderstorm, blustering from room to room,
the broom beneath his nose bristling back
and forth, calling out, "Where are my
CUFFLINKS?"
cu-ka-cuff-uff-ufful-flink-links-ks what a beautiful
complex treat for my young mouth, cufflinks, I wanted
to say it over and over, this thing I'd never heard of,
and Peter Pan was always my favorite story and
Mr. Darling, the broom-sporting thunderstorm, was also
Captain Hook, you know, my fascination
with this magic started early, started young,
I would stay up staring out my bedroom window nights
thinking if I only believed hard enough, he'd be there,
Pan, floating outside my second story, tickling
the sycamore, reaching out his hand to take me to
this magical world of cufflinks and acorns and
thimbles, which were or were not kisses, and
the year I met the young man who wore cufflinks,
I accidentally fell in love, I couldn't tell you how
now, any more than Pan could tell the Darlings
how he flew, without thinking, maybe the young man
tricked me with pixie dust and when I finally couldn't
fly for him anymore, months later I found
in my panty drawer, tarnished now, the silver Italian pair
I'd found in the antique store where I'd repaired
chandeliers one summer and I thought about how
even magic can get tarnished over time.
((I also wrote a haiku at work today. I asked the bartender to make me a lemon twist for an espresso order by saying, "May I request a lemon zest?" and she said, "Only if you make the next poem about it a haiku" so I came back after having written down for her:
espresso is nice,
but sometimes folks want a lem-
on zest. so gimme. ))
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