Smile-Face Pictures

The pictures from those days hang crooked
on the wall before the stairs, all smiles,
all oblivious to the paychecks that didn't pay,
the night after night with heartburn and lying awake.
Their dusty frames and glass contain momentary joy
that sometimes stretched like a rubberband across days
or weeks, but sometimes snapped and slapped back,
cracking like a cup and spilling it like a sink.

And now it seems we don't take any more pictures
and I wonder if we still have momentary joys or
are we jaded like jewelery from China?
I don't know, but on the stairs, I remember.

Winter Decisions

Do I write patterns or do they write me?
Pens leaking ink on my chest in circles,
arcs and angles, like a labyrinth, I move
according to the will of dead-end streets,
one-way signs, road construction and whispers.
God knows my patterns shift to the music.

And we find ourselves in my car, music
playing top forty when you look at me
Eyes, planets that plead we speak in whispers.
We've spent since March circumscribing circles,
sketching our rules made on walks through old streets,
and finally, silently, I will move.

The patterns we've sewn say "Make the damn move!
Stop looking for stop signs in the music!
Kiss for God's sake in the lights of these streets."
"Fredericksburg in winter," you say to me,
As I admire how your hair encircles
your face and moves with the slightest whisper

against your jacket, loud as our whispers,
voices barely swirling past. The car moves,
grumbling tires spinning their tight black circles.
Thumping pot holes, our disjointed music.
Your hand, finally, stretches to find me,
fingers lending warmth to frozen streets.

Until when thankfully we leave the streets
and lend flesh to the heat of our whispers.
I watch FOREVER pass in front of me
as the pattern of your red lips removes
any doubt you doubt, and with the music,
I close my eyes. The light leaves pink circles

throbbing on my eyelids. And fear circles.
You see, the pattern returns to these streets,
where even in embrace, doubtful whispers,
tickling my brain like the theme music
of Prokofiev's wolf, seem to warn me.
Yet I hold fast when the melody moves.

We move past circles, yet still use whispers.
We pass dead-end streets, we decide our move.
Past patterns? Music that does not move me.