Poetry Month Day 29 - And Suddenly

(UPDATE 4/6/10: This poem was revised for the Top 50 poems of April contest, presented by Poetic Asides and Writers Digest). Like most drafts, the original is somewhere safe but out of sight.)

    And Suddenly


you’re tracing ampersands in the dirt with your toes.
Summer comes, and with it a melody in your heart
about how long we’re going to last like a featherweight
counts the rounds. Instead of waiting for the judge’s
scores, you pack your makeup bag and board a bus
for somewhere colder, better to your luck.

Were you bored, or afraid? As tide this night erases all
your punctuations from the sand not scrubbed by
the alligator drags his belly through the muck, coffee
stronger than you liked takes its route through the throat
that speaks of you. Would it sicken you to find your
crushed butt still resting in the ashtray? It sickens me.

Everything human makes a spark. Everything human
dies. Near the river there’s a house I thought we’d share.
Its shingles are the broken teeth of a harsh winter,
its windows are smashed by kids who went there
with their spray cans aimed intent on professing
childish loves. I would have taken you to the dark
river-bitten nail of land and let sunlight disinfect
what others put inside you—the hard question marks
and vain exclamation points. I wasn’t ready to lose
the toenails digging commas in my calves or the elbow
that you’d rest at night on my sternum. An egret lands
on shoreline and, gulped up, warms the gator’s stomach.
We were like that for each other in one brief period.

***

For today's prompt, I want you to take the phrase "And Suddenly (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. Some examples: "And suddenly we were lost," "And suddenly over," "And suddenly banana," "And suddenly sudden," "And suddenly the poem I was writing turned into a killer robot," etc.