I'm in an airport. The walls are dark, burnt orange. The floors are grey. It's dimly lit, almost dark. It looks like a school. But it's an airport...but it's a school...
Everyone's here. There she is, and her, her, him...they're all here. All of them. Where are we going?
There? We're going there? "It's a class trip." But I don't have class with everyone here.
We're just friends.
What time is it? It's dark.
There you are. I was looking for you. Wait...who's that? Haven't I seen her before? Why are your legs covered? Your face looks mad...are you okay?
___

I'm in a hallway. A bedroom? My old bedroom? No, the airport, a hallway. Who are you? No, I know you, but what's your name? I forget.
You're kind. You smile, I smile, I know what you want to say.
We're in a hallway, on the floor. By the wall. There's a book, it's your book. "Read it." But when I look I can't see, the letters are blurry, the words are mixed up across the paper. Where are my glasses? There. They don't help anyway.
You kiss my forehead. I'm happy. I lay on your shoulder, leaning against this wall. A wall or a dresser, are we really in a hallway, and airport hallway?
You kiss me. You really kissed me, on my lips.
I'm sad. No, not angry...disappointed.
Not yet, I'm still with her. I want to be with her.
"You shouldn't."
I know. I don't want to. But I do, don't I? I look down.
I start to feel okay, I start to know what I want.
I look at you...
___

It's definitely a hallway now. This airport hallway. You're there. Where did you come from?
Don't get mad.
I know you're mad, please don't be.
Fine, be mad. At least he kisses my forehead.
Your legs are fine, you use them to walk away.
___

I'm still in this airport, only where everyone is.
We're leaving. We're on our way. Wait, my pocketknife. I can't take my pocketknife on the plane.
Where can I put it?
You're here again. She is too. You have crutches, I thought your legs were fine.
Can you hold my pocketknife? I can't bring it with me.
You looks so annoyed.
I'm sorry....
am I?
___

We're alone. We must be on the bridge, boarding the plane.
You look mad.
I'm confused. She left. Can we read the book again?
"I gave you a chance, you wouldn't."
No, I couldn't, couldn't.
You board the plane. I turn around.
___

My bedroom. My bedroom now.
It's light.

Remain present
post melancholy past
tangible chill
charaded memory
mind capacitated
titled

When I was born I asked the doctor, how he thought he did?
He recalled,
"Exquisite, it was a perfect delivery."
I rebutted,
"Then why am I still attached to the umbilical chord?"
He snipped me away from the tangling sheathe preventing me from exploration.
I leapt off the crinkling hospital bed paper and onto the goose-bump extracting tile floor.
Playfully bobbing my head as I walked into the world whilst giving the blonde doe-eyed nurse a crumpled note arranging what time I would pick her up for
dinner that night.
--Nurses enjoy being taken care of too.

When I was in preschool my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.
I told her, "I want to feel the love of a woman who makes me happy everyday and loves me for being me."
She under cut my desired fate, "That's not a something you can work for."
I whispered in her ear, "I know you have never felt love from another person."
She began to cry.
I told her, "That tears are just water for her soul to grow."
She got married later that spring after the rain had stopped,
--Her soul grew enough to show.

When I was seven years old a neighborhood bully stole my bicycle.
I cried for four minutes.
I was angry for about an hour.
Instead of telling him that my dad could beat up his dad
I began to wear my helmet everywhere I went.
I shouted to the other boys in my class,
"I had an invisible superb-deathly speedy-extraordinary-intergalactic- bike."
Two weeks later that same bully gave me my bike back.
As he relentlessly rubbed his knuckles into the top part of my scalp I thought nothing, but that this is the reason why my Grandpa went bald.
Then he muttered through his wheezing breaths of anger,
"My invisible bicycle was much faster than anything your ***** daddy could have bought you."
--Dad's, they love hypothetical fighting.

When I was eleven years old two airplanes hit two buildings in New York City.
I did not understand.
I asked my teacher, "Why would God make evil people?"
Through her tears she explained to me, "Some people are just born evil."
I shouted under my breath, "People are not born evil...
implementing ideas in the sponge of a youth's mind is what is morally corrupt and evil!"
--Corruption is the first cause of terrorism.

When I was fifteen years old I had my first real serious girlfriend.
I did not understand, again.
I exasperated to my father over drinking our first father-son beer,
"How do I know when I love a woman?"
He nostalgically took a drag of his menthol cigarette and as the smoke made it's way through his nose like fog in a canyon he said to me,
"Whenever you look into her eyes and know that there is nothing you wouldn't do for her, that is love."
Before he could reach down and crack another pilsner I told him,
"Dad I look a little lower than her eyes and that is where... everything I would do to her."
--Hormones are a *****.

When I was twenty-one years old my mom told me I couldn't come back home after I graduated college.
I begged her to give me time. I will make it, I promise.
I shouted in the driveway with all my belongings she had neatly placed for me to pack into my car, "How do I know when I am ready to be on my own?"
She didn't have to say anything for there was a brown envelope on top of my neatly folded clothes; that mysterious folding method all mom's know but I
could never seem to figure out,
"Son, you won't know. You won't know until you are poor, hungry, cold and exhausted everyday from trying to make something of your life. The character
you will build will help you later in life when you have a family of your own. I promise. I am not a tyrant, I care too much to see you widdle away here with me
in obscurity and waste all the dreams I know you have. I love you my baby."
--Mom's, even though they don't cut the umbilical chord...they cut the umbilical chord.