It's spring now

It's spring now.
Wooden willow skeletons are covering their bare bones, revealing
their freshly sewn stoles, bearing
their intention to propagate and deceive, bees
hunt for buds and leaves made to steal the sun
from the lonely speckled flowers laying in wait below.

A breeze makes its way between
the purple parasols of forget-me-nots, tumbling
and shoving through the crowd
like a drunken ghost, with no one around
to listen to him he spots me, bumbling
like a bee, he makes his way over.

I watch the commotion,
a notion we used to see, and
get wind of a distant memory;
It was here he told us, “Ya'll make me so happy!”
And this ghost carries the message again
with both hands out, offering it
to be re-collected.
I had forgotten it here.

It was fall then, gestation
was just beginning for us, we smoked
with the man made happy, stumbled
past students while the flower audience endured
underground, waiting for a later date to rear,
the wind weaving between us, stitches
in my stomach as we are made to laugh, happily
I remember this.
How could I forget?

“Ya'll gonna get married?” A shared glance, we shot
a smile and a shrug back, we,
the youngest things here,
with less experience than the dirt, trees
still groan from the stress of growth,
even the cement cracks from being too certain.
Who knows? He acts like he does,
“Ya'll make me so happy!”
We walked off
before the thought could take root, on the sidewalk
warm with puddles of sun
and left a ghost, the one we knew we couldn't care for,
we left him to drink it.

It's spring now.
I see the same haunted puddles and I fumble
with the sun, I want it all back!
but it doesn't want me,
I'm a pile of dead leaves and helicopter seeds.
I'm not suited yet, for growth
takes time, a seed will dig and undermine
the stubborn soil, the leaves will be green again
and the the bees will be back, but until then
wait out time, it'll move on.
April is the cruelest month.

I can't give it back, this memory
is stuck with me for the rest of my days, as I plant
dying leafy feet in the dirt, hopeless, helpless,
all I can do is dig my feet in, bask
and naively
ask the ghost, “Why me?”
His reply is
the worst silence you've never heard.

I listen and wait to grow.