Love Song for C. Andrew Sabo

The tiger-striped glasses that didn’t
look quite like I expected,
as though the frame in the doctor’s office
was the toy on the cereal box —
never the same as the one inside; sometimes
painted differently, sometimes
plastic, not steel —

the tiger-striped glasses, heavy
on my nose and adding roundness and orangeness
to an already circular and freckled face
paid me in headaches lost
(no headaches from squinting
at the Mr. Lawton’s chalky notes
on elements and particles
from the back of the class),
but cost me in those fleeting moments
with brown-haired Alyssa,
who thought I was making fun
of how she ate the banana,
who never seemed so interested
in me as me in her.

Chris Sabo, let’s go, you and I,
and lie etherized on the optometrist’s table;
let’s stretch across expired TIME
and NatGeo magazines until we
get our vision and our heartbreak;
let’s wait together and say nothing
when the toy inside is not red,
       but blue.