Etch-a-Sketch

Already the sky has forgotten everything:

    how to darken its picture,

how to draw circles around the moon,

the proper spacing of the stars.

 

It's always this way, he says.

First the stars go, then the year,

fading like the white dot

after the TV's been turned off.

 

And once a year

we shake it loose the sky,

our Etch-a-Sketch plans –

    all the people that didn't last,

all the glue that didn't hold,

rainchecks, rendezvous, everything

that fell through.

 

I pushed open the door

that held me there and ran

headlong into the new year.