by Brandon Amico

I will buy you a cellphone the size and tenor of Paris. I will buy you
a plane ticket to the other side of your home. I will buy you a proper family;
each struggle will bring us closer together, and when the cats die
we’ll make them into belts and the third cat will tie us together
forever. I will buy the sharp ends of your memories
so you can bury them all in your spacious yard. I’ll buy you theme music,
credit-reel saxophones; I will buy you the ’90s. You’ll wake up
to the alarm clock’s new crooning and copious sunlight and you’ll remark
that this is what the ’90s were actually like. The economy will hang plump
from the branches outside your window, like an island framed
that I could buy for you as well. I will buy you a sense of purpose
fulfilled, manifested, perfectly fuzzy edges, a glow
coming from the corners of every room. I will buy you
a Cold War punchline, a fact-of-the-day, Bazooka Joe comic
tucked in the child’s lunchbox with an ice-cream sandwich melted
by noon—your mother was so excited to surprise you, to be around
to watch you grow. I will buy you a house that looks
like hers. It will have a peephole with a view of the world.
I will buy you a key for disappearing into the material around you,
for cocooning. I will buy you your mother’s ashes, still
warm in the earth after twenty years.