Mirrors in mirrors, in mirrors, in mirrors: bitter diminution.
The rest of the material is a jaundiced blob of colors,
water sweating from a plastic sleeve, barely remembered
candy necklaces softening in the deep waters
of summer pool parties. A single luna moth taking refuge
in the shadow of the changing room’s concrete overhang.
Then the walk home along the roadside, sucking
on pixy-stix as long as our arms. Everything wide
and indulgent. But were things really taller then? No—
not the totem trunks of the maple trees, not the squirrel
that stole your jelly sandwich. My belief in the eminent
and humid refusal of today’s popsicle to taste as good
as its ancestors is just nostalgic exaggeration. The only
bigger thing back then was the diving board, unfocused
beneath our knees, its distance to the splash atremble
with things we’d yet to grow used to, redo, forget, redo.