Rock Candy

Seven months pregnant at least, she drags
me to a shrieking arena jeweled in
lip gloss and taffy, stripped
lights dazzling up black panels four stories high.
He is only a doll down there,
Adonis in skinny jeans
strutting on a flash strobe stage jutting out
into the reaching damp arms of ruby-throated
pubescent hunger, baby birds one and all
wide for whatever might fall
from his ambrosial smirk

She in bubble gum pink, dizzy eyes tearing
up as they do for anything
moving even one cilia of her porous borders,
she presses over the balcony, weight
of son threatening to topple her
over to the much more merciful
end of this story

But she manages to stay
tethered to gravity and bounces in place
for omigod
whatever spoonful of sugar
she can get
which is all any of us
can hope for

From the mass of chirps and squeals
he lifts one stunned, nameless nestling
to his bridge and twines a purr around her
heart, blouse spitting buttons almost
from the impact
before he straight up kisses
the anyone who could be
me or omigod omigod
my friend in pink

She fans hot air over hotter face
with a hand not yet weighed
down by the rock
that will eventually take her
almost completely
under to a place that air has long since
vacated and left only a plundered
locker where the bones are kept

But for one glass bauble
floating somewhere up near the skin
of night
and its faithless promise,
a little curl of the child
she is
herself and to whom she is
now bound, she must reach
towards surface
no matter how tempting
the song,
that lustrous snaking siren
of surrender