The Toy

I wish I had known
you would become the sandbox
every child eventually crawls out of
when I was more than content to crawl in

and be delighted by cat s**t and cheap plastic.
When I was the self-trafficking  slave to your four corners
where I held a vigil, choked it really,  to remember the days
when you stepped inside them

and the sand became the familiar fibers of our living room carpet
and the s**t found its home in the bowels of our favorite kitty
and the sun melted the plastic into something harder to define

than the murderous trademark of Your Absence,
a product I’ve spent my life trying to recall
like a dolly or a teddy cursed with a strangulation hazard
it’s eternally too young to understand.