How to Eat Sugar Cane

I use to be a detective. Harriet the Spy. transcribing the lives of unsuspecting strangers. examining their rippled hands. making up stories about Southern women in full length furs buying milk at the grocery store. silver rope tossed across their shoulders. Decorated warriors. wondering how many times they've folded their paper hearts and floated them on top of roaring oceans. Waiting for high tide on shifting floors. Nine life living. Now I follow men. Convicted criminials with no records or recollection of their sins. Stealing tithes from a lone congregation. I know them. Wu-tang loving, weed smoking, mama's boys. who can pull Pomegranate seeds from their pockets and make me eat from their hands. Them. Walking out of the same doors their fathers did. Forgetting to close it. Them. Engraved pens that can't write for shit. I put puzzled pictures back together. I prefer Scotch tape or vodka. But this one taught me How to Eat Sugar Cane. brought bundles of sweetness back from the Sticky sun. and tucked me in. But when I came home, probably after scrapping another chapter. My Mama's permanent First Sunday smile was lost. I looked for it. under brown couch cushions and in the frames of the ten pictures of me on the mantle. I found it in the overflowing dirty clothes hamper. I should have known, it was in his pocket. I threw away my magnifying glass.