No more baptisms

The fields had bloomed a nauseous green

in my springtime turmoil

running  not as to frolick

but, rather, as to escape:

That figure looming over me. 

"If you're so talented and smart, why can't you LEARN?"

There was no more room for delicate idealism.

The drinks had spilled from house to car to classroom

And I was drowning. 

And I was a just a thing

cracked and dead on the roadside-

The roadside, where I spotted an echoing of need.

An abandoned robin's egg.

A desperate surge of hope

drove my rescuing hands

under that blue core.

And I cradled it home

half mad and crying

in the soft swing of my shirt.

(I would save myself.

I would save the world.)

I baptized it in the bathtub,

dizzy on drinks and purple perfume.

Alchemy leeched forth

from old marble walls

to cup my hands around 

this necromancy

and whispered a golden turning point

in my flushed ears.

then

I watched

the robin's egg

rot.

It had been a dead thing from the start.