Dust

Wishes like dust,
will float 
above your head,
collect on your picture frames
on your furniture

Unable to be grasped
in clenched fists
existing only to be brushed off
with old cloths and rags

Leaving us to wait
for them to collect again
through the days spent
wasted on what ifs and
almosts

A drive

We were driving in his car and the windows were open and I wondered if I would know him in ten years. I knew that I wouldn’t, and that I wouldn’t want to. Though, he was going to be successful, maybe he’d have lots of money and a big house. But I wouldn’t want to know him.

I wondered if he thought the silence was awkward. If he was searching his brain for something to talk about, if the empty sound of the air made him uncomfortable, or if he noticed how it didn’t bother me. I wondered if he heard the traffic and the wind, if he was as caught up in it as I was. I didn’t have anything to say anyway. Nor did I like the sound of my voice around him. It wasn’t the cute, high pitched voice I would have with other boys, but more monotone and hoarse sounding, at least to me. I wondered what it sounded like to him, or if he minded.

I wondered if he had given up on trying to make conversation and knew I wasn’t who he wanted me to be. Or if he recognized I gave up on trying to be her. I looked over at him and smiled, and he laughed—the awkward-silence-filling- kind-of-laugh.

I wondered what kind of drugs he had done. Or if he cared that I didn’t do them too. Or if he noticed how naïve I felt when we talked about them. I felt so immature around him, and yet when I would leave, I felt so much more wisdom then he could ever grasp his hands on. I wondered why he did those drugs. He seemed so okay all the time, but I never saw more of him.

I didn’t know what was happening. I wondered why after all this he wanted to see me. After I called him hopeless. I wondered if he was hoping he may have overlooked me. In which case, he didn’t understand why I called him hopeless in the first place.

I wanted so badly to see more of him even though I had seen so much of him, I wanted to know who he was, but instead he was silent and so was I. I wanted to ask him all those questions you ask someone when you are getting to know them. “What’s your biggest fear?” “What do you want to do before you die?” “Where is your favorite place?” But none of them seemed real enough. They all seemed so superficial. I never gave a fuck in the first place about those things anyway. So I didn’t ask them.

It was so warm out, my legs were burning through the window from the sun which was still high. I felt so young. I looked at him again, and then the clock on the radio, which blared some indie shit. It was getting late and I hadn’t gotten any work done despite all the Adderall I gulfed down.

I had given him so much time. And neither of us knew why. I wondered if my friends were looking for me. I didn’t have my phone. I wondered if it would all sound so much cuter when I told them who I was with. If they would care about how he had hurt me. How I ignored it. How he did too.

He pulled into the street to let me out in front of the apartment and said he would call. I wondered if he had known I knew he wouldn’t. Or if I believed him, I wondered if I did myself. And knew simultaneously how I shouldn’t. I closed the door to the truck and thanked him for the ride. And walked away wondering if he was watching me. And knew simultaneously that he wasn’t.

Where

I wiped off all my makeup

To find something maps could not

but mirrors were distracted

by cracks and imperfections

while what lay underneath

was nothing at all

So I grabbed a pair of scissors

And with no feeling or pain

Chopped off all my hair

To see if there my search would end

But red covered floors didn’t give a clue

I got up to grab a book

To search its cryptic lines

For what I needed most

Where others had found theirs

But no word big or small

Took me where I needed to go

So I fell and hit my head

To walk inside my brain

And not knowing when it started

Or how I got to where I was

I took a walk to the very back

Where I kept it very dark

and there it was I tripped

over my search’s end, boxed up

but voices loud awoke me, before

I got to see what it looked like

And though it’s disguised still and forever it may be

I know comfort I had found

In knowing it would always be with me

Hair

My hair has always fallen to the middle of my back. And in my face, when I would lay down in my bed with a boy. And down the drain in the shower with each wash. My hair has always been red, like my resentment and my jealousy and my beauty and my individual. Never too bright, or too dark. Just red against the translucent canvas that is my skin. It seems at twenty my hair is no longer a dead cell though, but rather a long, red metaphor of my youth growing out of my head. I was once told boys would not be attracted to me if I were to cut it. I was told I would look old if I did so. I was told it is too beautiful to throw away like that. I always heard, but could not understand because as I said, it is dead, so how can it feel pain? How can it do all those things? As it seems though, hair can be more than just a cell, but instead an expression, a symbol of maturity, an attraction, a reason for cast judgment. I want to cut it all off though, because hair is none of those things. Those are thoughts and thoughts are not on top of my head, they are in my head.

"Hello"

I wrote a poem from the past

Found it and read aloud, “hello”

with apathy and nothing else

as if I could recall

a passage written in my youth,

now insulted, I read on,

a line of which, proclaimed my age

as if I was no longer young

no longer a dreamer

dreaming dreams of days

that were built merely on day dreams

to be forever young

no longer though, one could tell

(or so the print would say)

because only those of grown

dream to be forever young

nostalgia grows with seasons

not in deserts dry,

yelled the poem in cryptic form

so insulted I read on

not showing it on my cheek

swearing mistakes are strewn

I told the poem with lead nor ink

And with victory, I smiled, nonetheless

For the author will fall to me

Older whom which may be the one

Who writes the poem just now,

and not the one who reads

so be my hair gray tomorrow,

still younger I will be

because the author will remain

nothing but an infinite memory

Sunday Morning

Drunken tongues can curse the kings of young

mere boys of daylights reign

to override the prestige they preach in sober company

whilst drunken bones can bring to dance with contract in disguise

to disregard conscious being unbound to conscious mind

only to which append a tally for wake’s impending demise

whom that they greet in foreign realms, they conquered with drunken feet

callous to the territory who lay a blazed, as if the wind stormed in

while somber be lass whose sin soaked skin lay bare

as kings tip toe crown in hand,

unbeknown to such fair child who always fails to stir

then and only then with foolish backs turned against a foolish scene

fallen kings denounce a time line plea

enabling failure to repeat,

for how can man, not god, learn from wrongs of old

if he closes a door from here to there,

look forward and not dismiss the warns of which sober had once told