Chalk

07/21/2008
This is one of my favourites.

It smells like fresh flowers
And long lost hours
Of children playing with chalk.
The pavement is stained
And faded by rain,
The cool damp aftershock.

The illustrations are gone,
But they were worked on
From morning until dinner's ready.
Asked for five more minutes,
They had their hearts in it,
But their schedule had to run steady.

All they worked for,
Pavement made their knees sore,
Forgotten as they went to bed.
Outside the soft call
Of a summer rain fall,
Erased memories from their head.

He waits in his yard,
His baseball glove hard,
The car will pull in any time now.
His mom in the doorway,
With nothing to say,
No idea where to start and how.

The phone call is here,
Just as she feared,
And he's not coming home tonight.
He waits in the driveway,
Waiting for her to say,"Come in"
and he won't try and fight.

The game's on TV,
He watches quietly,
His mom buys him baseball cards.
He goes to bed,
Doesn't rest but instead,
Waits to go wait again in the yard.

That same record plays,
For the eighth time today,
She knows every note, every sound.
The picture stays near,
It's heartbreakingly clear,
What she's drowning out all around.

The sun shines bright,
But she curls up tight
On the floor as the music goes.
Feeling what she had then,
Her very best friend,
All the way down to her toes.

They try and they try,
Her dad says "Go outside",
But she just puts the needle back on.
The summer is calling,
And she lays stalling,
Missing her, with her favourite song.

Etched in wet concrete,
Their initials and feet,
Love made eternal outside her home.
The concrete grew hard,
On the edge of her yard,
And they never spent a day alone.

One night he worked late,
She tanned and then ate,
She went to bed early that night.
But he chose to stay out,
With a girl who'd been about,
A late phone call shook her with fright.

Her friends came the next day,
And with nothing to say,
They went to work on her sidewalk.
With every line made,
His memory fades,
Forgotten under markings of chalk.

The sun shines on,
The chalk is gone,
But there is more to those marks and lines.
What once felt so rotten,
Soon will be forgotten,
Like driveway chalk after dinner time.