Specks

Can you make out the little specks?
Those little specks of dandelion feathers attracted to the static of my coat?
when the lights warp and flicker in the darkness
no, of course not
you’ve eyes only for the brighter things
and have forgotten the bushes around which the string of lights are wrapped
because those are lost to shadow.
memories of wrapping your bare hand, chapped and red, around a snowball
as a child
come back, flooding in, like a damn dream ripped short
but you did it anyway
you held the snowball in your hands because you thought you could
getting by with an understanding barely there for how the cold works
or how the cold burns when it’s that cold outside.
and your version of me
warped into something too varnished that now exists only in your mind’s sight
so you liked the idea of me
you liked it until the vase tumbled to the tiles
before the surface unscratched, unscathed
crumbled to dust and glass and tears
that you weren’t sure what to do with
past years of knowing someone but never truly knowing them
until all you see is the image as a whole
you missed the little specks, like how
fingerprint sketches drawn carelessly on the fog of the car window
are forgotten messages evaporated the next day,
how words become a mouthful to say so you don’t bother
putting in the time to think about them,
how those pen marks engraved into the wood of the table are missed
as fragments of one story of however many that belong to a person,
like every crease in the spine of a worn book, glanced at
then glanced over like the soft grains in the carpet,
or a stain in need of covering,
overlooked like paint cracks in the wall
because you didn’t think to step closer
and see all the parts up close
all the specks sorely missed
because that’s not the way you were wired.