Allison
Just a baby in a baby’s arms
At age two I knew
to use all of my strength
to never let you go
I’d scale your crib to come and play
You’d climb the ladder just to lay
with me
Sleepovers on the trundle bed
Camping in the living room
Sharing a room
Sharing a life
Playing barbies in my room and
beyblades in yours
Polly pockets and littlest pet shops
Tech decks and legos
Making art at the kitchen table
and mad science experiments in the art room
Dress up, karaoke, and carpet sliders in the den
Ripstick and razor scooter in the garage
Fisher Price basketball hoop in the drive
Swingset and sledding in the backyard
We were so much younger then
Living in a world of play
A play world
Where the worst thing that could happen
was borrowing a doll without asking
or making you sing a song you didn’t like
or dropping the ball during catch
or breaking the lego house
When our lego house broke
we were too old to play with blocks
but too young to ask why
We had to learn how to build it again
with new pieces
Pieces that didn’t look like they could fit together
when the pieces we knew didn’t fit together
anymore
“Two Households
both alike in dignity,
where civil blood makes civil hands unclean
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes…
Parents’ strife…
Parents’ rage…
Their children’s end, nought could remove
Is now the…traffic of our stage…”
Our play took new meaning
Brawl at the condo
Space Invaders at the house
Too old to be playing telephone between the two
but too young to relay that message
In the traffic
on Route 25
We listen to Twenty One Pilots
The car packed with our lives in the bags we haul back and forth twice a week
Things bound to be forgotten
But what’s to be remembered;
Everyone knows that legos can break
But when the house falls
It isn’t all gone
We are still building
and always will
still be building
With all of our strength
we’ll hold walls up
and let others down
We’ll play
And lay at rest
Forever old enough and young enough
to know
In each others’ arms
We’ll never let go