ambrosia isn't real

a poem

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

i found,

written in riddles

that tumbled down my childhood staircase,

a promise that time was ambrosia,

‎

if you rubbed it on your soles

before you slept, and

maybe a dab under the nose

and eyes

‎

one morning

the curtains would crack

and the grass and sky

would be flourishing again,

‎

like a stained glass window

that obscured

and colored

God.

‎

but age takes

in days and rivers,

in storms and whispers

it pulls you down by the joints and screams, soundless.

‎

i wish the film of gold and honey

had never sloughed off my amber gaze,

that i still saw a stranger

and wondered first whether or not they believed in god and the Phillies.

‎

i wake to missiles flung across the globe,

to screams growing further

away as bootsteps mimic my heart

like ill tempo’d drumbeats.

‎

genocide and greed

create a long shadow,

and i still carry grief

over things that never mattered to anyone

‎

but me.

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