This is the trouble with visiting the past:
you are not invited.

The past prefers to be left alone, knitting
sweaters from cobwebs, stitching proverbs
into pillows, using words that mean
nothing except to the past.

Take this red velvet pillow: a first kiss,
your nose smothered in lips and spit.
Or this button-down cushion: being drunk,
wishing you could roll up your tongue.

This crystal bowl filled with peppermint eyes
that watched at the window while you went away.
The past has nothing to say to you,
Yet you cannot stay away from its room,

where the scissors are always sharp, constantly
reminding you to forget your umbrella
in the upcoming thunderstorm that will be your future.
Better to follow your own footprints into the golden unknown —

that unsettled puzzle which keeps changing your shape
as it compliments your bendy ability, your open
relationship with gravity, your knockout lackadaisical style,
the way you close people off as though they were books.

Let me introduce you to the no-trouble way:
Look ahead. Be afraid. Stand up straight.