Teacher’s Pets
I tuck them into my apron:
Adam in a cotton wrinkle,
Aaron in a tightly-stitched pocket,
Beryl in strings that refuse knots or bows.
Beverly clutches my hem,
her memory folding into itself
while Colin, dressed in leather at seven,
hangs around a corner seam.
My years, once measured in yards
of tumbling school children.
The pull towards trees.
Summer.
I chose the quiet ones
who seldom laughed,
gathered them like bruised plums,
watched their blackening to senescence.
Impossible to expiate,
they hug my waist with the dead
weight of failure.
The ones I couldn’t save.