In an old house, facing a pool table where I sit,
Amidst seldom-used treadmill, and unplayable board games with missing pieces
Are picture frames of a family.
Four large frames, each a decade of fading photographs.
I wanted to read a love story, but I couldn’t.
There were too many characters;
Too many children, and then grandchildren.
As the couple aged and grayed, the photographs became more colorful, busier, and harder to take in.
What my mind struggled to reduce to something easy, something I could simplify to a single sugary taste
Would not let itself.
It was a story of building something big, and it was my mind that found itself wronging my own desires.
I never loved to just love;
That is to merely feel strongly, about being fulfilled by someone and fulfilling in turn.
I acknowledge what is within my genes, that is to build a family just like this,
Then to age within moments in the presence of guests in a hall marveling at our likenesses—
Amidst younger and younger pieces of me, surrounding me in the photographs,
Filling the future with me
In brighter colored testimonies
Even as I wither and gray like thunderheads holding within
The lightning I am now.
