Too Late to Mourn

I threw my childhood bones

in your incinerator.

You lured my younger years

with melted sweets, 

and cannonballs 

that emptied out the pool.

You were a shimmer, Summer,

a mirage of days to play

in endless heat. My feet

were bare, I didn’t care 

if streets were cooking

off my skin. I was a sacrifice,

a holocaust. Those years are lost.

No tears can bring them back again.

published in Sonnets to Sing