With whom do you only have summer memories?

Lolo played the piano and I would dance one day
Tango and classical
I wanted to dig those songs
Introduce myself

With whom do you only have summer memories
Hearing only melodies of struck precision
Light when necessary
Rich
Contiguous

The afternoon is saturated in early sunlight
Filtered through the bands of inoffensive dust
And palatable bright envelopes the scene
Extracted from a timeless frame of space

The carpet is aerial-shot earth and ocean shag
Where my toes surrender under bent knees
of stepping legs lifted by arms floating out
with nothing to do but be arms
and no idea what a ballerina would do
but twirl on one axis
like the little white wind-up figure
in my jewelry box

She has no face
Just red lips
A compartment dream
Did not belong to me
Pink and white roses
Velvet interior
A mirror

The box was always
Empty and outside was more open

Lolo whistled like his teeth were ivory or coconut meat
Meant he was shoveling or having coffee with acidophilus milk
He made Filipino profanity and mahjong shuffle

In the morning basement he hacked up yesterday’s phlegm into a toilet cough
In the bathroom where his dentures slept
Where we split his Salem cigarettes and flushed them
Like a love we could reciprocate