“Keep the balloon, and dare not
to worry,” Marilyn journaled
in the greyed scrape of lead
beside a plume of red balloons.

Maybe she wanted to explain nuclear war.

The balloons must be a clue.
The way they mocked the page
much in the way they mocked
the sky Marilyn refused to draw.

Maybe she needed to be remembered.

Her voice was small, but had a joke in it.
She laughed pink champagne
like a woman should. Her walk liaised
the moments between words&nights&hotelrooms.

Maybe it was an inside joke. Or memory.

It won’t do any good to hold a séance.
It’s much too late to ask her what she meant.
By then it was all cinder blocks & sheetrock,
and even if she knew, she wouldn’t tell you.