I need to be alone with my words.
They may come and go, yet I don’t obsess
As they slip away from thoughts.
I know we’re going to last.
I remember when my words made people
See me differently.
Stop.
Reassess.
My words were never dark
But they were unafraid.
Her music sounds like an anxiety attack. Unsuspecting, it starts. That’s when this happens:
She stands completely still as guitars around her have a meltdown.
They turn to cacophony.
Through all of the screeching, her voice doesn’t give in.
It’s outer calm with an inner panic.
It’s a flushed face.
Here’s a secret - I don’t go to the coffee shop for the coffee.
The doorbell jingles.
The nerdy guy comes in, timid with his backpack.
The couple puts up wall art.
The cat walks by.
The accents twang.
The iPad flips pages.
The girl has wings tattooed on her back.
“No caffeine or alcohol, what are you Mormon?”
Overheard over coffee - the words that flow in other people’s conversations.
The nuances of speech, how we establish who we are through words.
It’s sharing only what you want them to know, a defining dance as you speak and then don’t.
His name is Hector. It’s his job to peruse the property, to check for intruders to his perfect landscape.
He wakes every morning and looks in windows. He must make sure all’s to code, keeping things in order helps him to deal.
He cranes his neck because he’s a crane.
Nick’s got a sort-of girlfriend named Heather that he met at his latest job – Wednesday night stock boy at Books-A-Million.
He’s your standard greasy concert-teed/dirty jeans/bad-attitude guy, living in his childhood room.
Nick’s been perfecting this half-awake, half-life for years, until two bumps on his back changed everything.
Tracks rumble, echo beneath ear buds.
Is it? Could it be? No that’s the escalator, moving no one.
Next to me is graffiti of a man drawn in white-out, with lightning bolts coming out of his head. He’s got bags under his eyes, thick and heavy with memories of sleep.
“Biker Bible Study.”
“Hookers Car Towing.”
It’s a town in a state with so many towns like this. Small. Confederate flags adorn truck’s back windows. Pro-life billboards dot the expressways, like the many love bugs that swirl onto to cars.
They melt and stick to hoods in Florida July heat.
I was young when we lived on the farm in Iowa. While I would lay awake some nights, afraid of the dark, the curtains would blow the trees’ smell of warmth and soil across my wood floors.
These are all just memories now, because in space there are no trees.
I want to be cheesy and write New York a love letter.
Fuck it, I write it mentally anyway.
Babies everywhere. Today I saw a line of tiny kids holding onto a rope wearing art smocks. Growing up here screws you if this is your idea of a normal city.
