Time’s weathering blisters and flakes away

the patina of your hypothesis:

your parents, how they lived, who they loved.

Those dash dotted presumptions

were just pointillist’s renderings

of knowing someone well through merely seeing them.

From looking up when knee high, thigh, shoulder, head high,

then swapping vantages.

Them gradually lessening, cresting the vanishing point

and gone.

Close the book of private thoughts,

put a glass to the wall.

Listen, tell me:

 

can you hear them laughing

down all those cluttered well-lit yesterdays?

 

You presumed every atom.

Fashioned them

to fit a frame around a portrait you commissioned,

and painted too

and for all the world it looks like you -

just,

even at this distance,

you can’t see it.