REVISION
by Daniel Romo
Let’s say we’re seahorses. Let’s say our forgotten birthday candles
have melted into coral. Let’s say the coral is forgotten, too.
Let’s say the water is repetition. It is high tide. We have washed ashore.
The children scoop us up with plastic shovels.
They drop us into half-filled buckets of sandy water
hoping to revive us.
Their mothers convince them to throw us back. Our bodies turn to foam.
We are already dead.
Let’s say we’re notorious bank robbers planning our heist from our hideout.
Let’s say our masks are big yellow happy faces.
Let’s say we are bad men.
Our mothers have written us letters trying to convince us
to turn ourselves in.
We rip them up and smile. We were always disobedient children.
Let’s say we’re cops who have been tipped off,
about to raid the hideout.
Let’s say our guns are loaded, and our laughs are loud.
Let’s say we’re liars and none of this happened.
Let’s say we were seahorses.
Let’s say our birthdays were never celebrated.
Let’s say we’ve crossed out those times in our lives.
Let’s say we’re convenient rough drafts.
…”Revision” appears in the Silver Birch Press release Romancing Gravity, a collection of poems by Daniel Romo, available at Amazon.com.
Silver Birch Press 