What to do With That Mason Jar
There are kind things you said to me
– I cling to them like grudges, preserve them
like pig fetuses, lining the shelving
of my brain. That morning, in the café,
I faced you and the sun. You stopped
midsentence to say, Your eyes are so pretty,
inspecting them with your own, you never finished
what you’d been saying. My eyes:
blue and unlike yours, something to do
with a variation in the OCA2 gene.
Now, you joke about their color,
The gene is going extinct! you say
when I squint, rummage through my purse for shades.
You’re an endangered species with those eyes —
and while you talk, I wonder if you’ll miss them.
Perhaps I’ll scoop them out before I go;
put them in a jar by your bedside, near the crystals
you charged in the eclipse, near the Buddha
your best friend brought you from China.
Yes, I will put my eyes in a jar by your bedside
so you can watch them bobble in ethanol,
let them remind you of the nice things you once said
to me in a café in the sunlight, that morning.
