The Never’s I can’t (just yet)

Sashawne Smith

That I don’t get back all the frames,
the ones where I strained against myself
unable to make mistakes of my own
then traded for analyses of emotion that wasn’t mine
but stole my caution, nonetheless.
Together, what is theirs and what is mine
they hang from nails in the wall of my childhood
home, evenly spaced, next to the painting
my uncle gave me of Ocho Rios—8 rivers,
and each lukewarm.
I struggle

with knowing
that I have lived enough life to look back
and find regret littered
all over my adolescence
like the spots, I used to call a plague—
when they were just white warnings on a black canvas
and I hated the contrast that made.
Or

that I see transactions in everything
red margins, narrow lines
and outstanding sums
as if I were born of irony’s accountant
who, try as they might,
could never quite balance
What is with what was
and it became a generational trait.
I think the worst is that I am never
going to be that

person.
It’s been too long since I left naivety
standing in the way
she could’ve knocked, or rung, or screamed herself in
but I chained her tongue to the roof
of her mouth and carried on
and now I have no more of that

innocence to rely on.