For years I thought of the buttered bread

I might have needed to place into your palm,

the different ways to say “red” so you wouldn’t

miss an inch of autumn, a slice of velvet cake.

The darkness that happened to you once, briefly,

it happened to me for years. That blackness—

you dropped it—I picked it up for you, I polished it,

tucked it like a passport into my nightstand drawer.
—Todd Dillard

Parading