Liza Sparks

KISSING CARNIVAL LIGHTS

It would be easier if I could think of you like a traveling carnival:
it came into town and pitched its tent,

I ate pink cotton candy until I puked, played games and didn’t win anything,
and rode the same ride over and over again, upside down and around again -

and thought, wouldn’t it be nice if the carnival was always in town.
And then one day it was just gone, like everyone knew it would be,

like I knew it would be (even when I was pretending), leaving
empty bags of popcorn and footprints in the dirt – things to clean up.

And no one would ever know that it had been there, unless they knew.
Unless they had kissed those carnival lights.

And would it be easier now, if I had just closed my eyes?

Author Bio

Liza Sparks is from Lafayette Colorado and graduated from The Colorado College in 2009. Her poetry has appeared in The Leviathan, Home (this – a literary webzine), Poets online, and will be appearing in Issue Three ofBennington’s Plain China (Best Undergraduate Writing 2009).