A Mere Frosted Tube

Let’s workshop this poem about a little boy’s anxiety to preserve, with the help of a keepsake, the memory of a fireworks event that part of him fears will fade

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A Mere Frosted Tube

Just having been there was not enough.
A lingering emptiness called for more
to be done. It helped that its witnesses
were family. But what he really sought
was to carry the place, the time, home 
somehow: a surrogate, like a seashell 
from the beach—a tangible memento 
of the colors and his father’s embrace. 

It would be, part of him felt, forgotten
by and by—a seashell in a drawer. Lost,
though, in a booster seat headed home 
from fireworks this Fourth, then dozing
under bed blankets for added darkness,
the child denies that palpable dimming 
in the necklace whose neon will endure, 
he wants to think, as long as he keeps it.

This poem is unpublished

Photo: glowtopia.co.uk/product/22-inch-glow-stick-necklace/