The other one.

My touch caught her off guard at first
as I embraced her hello.
I thought perhaps she was shy
and unaccustomed to my willingness
to break bread with strangers.

She held me cautiously then,
ensuring it was brief
and the surface area she touched
was minimal.
Her fingertips recoiled backwards
in an attempt to retract her arms.

She grazed against me carefully,
and looked at me like I was dirt.

I spent our time together
quietly embarassed
unsure of what to think,
or where to go,
or if I was imagining things.
Fidgeting often
in an attempt to regain my composure.

Pretending I wasn't leverage
for the girl you wanted.

From the beginning, when we
hit the road
I was curious as to
where it would take us
I should have just enjoyed the drive.

Soft decay

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”

― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

Looking.

A storm

is a storm

is a storm.

But the white!

it shifts noiselessly

Robbing us in broad daylight

of definition,

Like those misfits

with heads like balloons

Open from vacancy

No wrist for string.

It’s tiring

laying on our backs

watching the same clouds

Seeing different things.

Wake up

Take your head from the grass

before the worms bore in.

The dark.

Night visitors

coming thick and melancholy

forcing pebbles in necks

with vertebrae 

crunching the gravel

lending rope where there once was spine

cancer 

where there once was heart

lightening flashes too sudden 

to be thoughts 

falling like a deck of cards.

Now there are eyes where there once were dreams

darting inwards, eroding the dark.

Downhill.

If I were a better friend

with a braver heart

who didn’t.

I would say run, run

Run.

faster than your feet know how

to the place

where the echo of your footsteps should be

with the ruins of that boy

instead of the confines 

of that man.