Love short man

Let me tell you a short story
about a love short man
who smiled as a boy;
grinned as an adolescent;
laughed as an adult.

The boy smiled
as matchstick fingers burned
as gifts of life's lessons;
each day passing as a steamy
hiss of sadness emanating
where molten metal met watery truth
casting upturned lips in
shades of oxidation.

The adolescent grinned
as he dodged the picture-book images
moving at him from
light to dark to light to dark.
The pain bursting the flickering
light bulbs of his imagination,
scattering the glass on hardwood floors
like so many crunchy potato chips
under bloody toes.

The man laughed;
enduring the passive-aggressive
fresco rainbows already made moldy
by the anvil thunderheads
sweeping through the bedroom in
convulsive weather patterns.
Even the door frame has
swollen shut to tender affections.

The period at the end of the
sentence of life approaches
the boy,
the adolescent,
the man
in a  dream asking each,

where do you come from
and where are you going?