Today's poem is by Bruce Bond

Crematorium of Toys
       

I am putting my sadness in a box
I call a liver, a voice, a mother complex,
some vital part with its own thin skin
to mark where sadness begins, or ends,
depending on your point of departure.
I am putting my mom in a nightmare

that turns tender, because, well, because.
When I pack such things, I cauterize
the wound. I give it a sizzle and a kiss.
Do I miss it, you ask. Ask my sadness.
Ask me when I am older, and the bruised
and aging tissues do what tissues do.

I am going to revise whatever wisdom
I thought I had. I say, there comes a time
for boxes. Most of my toys left home
for other children or the crematorium
of toys. But I kept a few. I packed them
with this dismissal, that disappointment.

I stacked them like blocks in the attic.
But now and then, I tear into a package
and find the child in it. I say, come out.
You can breathe now, play with fire, eat dirt.
I love you, little monster. I always will.
I saved you with my sadness, after all.

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Copyright © 2024 Bruce Bond All rights reserved
from Five Points
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission