One mistake after another
Bad choices followed by more bad choices
Is there a way to win this game
Or do you just die at the end

Late December: my father and I
are going to New York, to the circus.
He holds me
on his shoulders in the bitter wind:
scraps of white paper
blow over the railroad ties.

My father liked
to stand like this, to hold me
so he couldn't see me.
I remember
staring straight ahead
into the world my father saw;
I was learning
to absorb its emptiness,
the heavy snow
not falling, whirling around us.

Sitting,
Listening,
Pondering,
Breathing in the clear night,
Basking in the full moon,
Feeling exhaustion.
Drip off of my body,
Feeling the cold nip at my knees,
Gazing up.
My eyes following the lines of constellations,
Taking a moment just to be,
Because there really isn't anything better.

I wanted you to be
the one in the car beside me
sitting still
watching the lights on the freeway
pass us by

speaking quietly
words about ourselves and each other
using stories as a reason to stay
there in the moment  

I wanted the way you can hear someones smile
rather than see it
I wanted you to be one hundred percent mine  
just for that short amount of time

I wanted you to be a simple pleasure
a single simple moment  

I wanted you to be something you were not
for I came to realize

you were not simple at all