Blank mind
Eyes open
Intake everything
Or focus on a
Singular star.
Any number of
Profound and perfect things
Could be murmured right now
And etched into the
Night sky’s infinite existence
To dance with the stars

So I—
With hands cupped over mouth,
Eyes bleary from tears,
And hoarse voiced—
Whisper

“I’m so stupid”

And it was by far
The most insightful,
True,
And honest thing
I’ve ever said.

She’s got a hole on the topside of her right Nike shoe
Pink, black, white patterns ruined by her bony toe
Does she know
She’s not wearing socks?

Hair callously thrown into a disgraceful bun
Wetted from sweat or shower
I’ll never know.

Screensaver sepia toned
And donned in the center
Is a lover, perhaps,
Kissing her laughing cheek.

She’s more organized than me,
Dutifully taking notes
And yearning, craving for the professors
Pleasant spew of factual ****

She records his words
I record my thoughts
Who’s the more selfish one?
This stranger sitting diagonally in front of me
With her pink ears and lightly freckled face,
Or myself
Because I don’t even want to know her name.

Her world will forever remain a place
Untainted by myself
(Lucky her).
She’ll remain a mystery, an enigma
Stories that define who she is
Left for assumption and infinity.

She’ll never know I’m thinking
Only of her
And for absolutely no purpose
Other than practicing
Observing the small glimpses
Of people’s lives they offer you
Unknowingly

It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.

don't I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.