Trust

What makes the old wiser,
Isn’t so much the things that happen,
But those, that halt short of just happening.
Those disturbing lines we save as quotes,
Come not so much from backpacks filled with memories,
But from piled platters of putrid promises; unkept undertakings; unfulfilled pledges.

The slick edge in a precocious gaze,
Sometimes,
Cuts deeper than blades of gray hair,
Leaves you more exposed than a cackle of ridicule.

You perhaps wish you could un-know –
That it wasn’t the guy who brought you cookies to make you smile,
But he, who never wrote back when you reached out -
That taught you of the hurtfully feminine vulnerability... of trust.

A shy corner in my hollow chest quivers,
[still tenderly trembles when it thinks of you]
Disseminating shivers of baffled goose-bumps…
You cross my mind in rainbow hues –
Pacing though the mist,
Eerily like a chameleon.

June 22, 2010.