You won’t remember this
but that time we sat
on the steps of your cousin’s place
in Brooklyn, Hewes St., one October night,
where we stayed out
and talked till three A.M.,
our fingers chapped,
our noses tinged crimson.
I remember it because
you were cold and I gave you
my jacket, the black one
I’d only just bought the day before
and you said wow, look at those goosebumps
popping up along your arms,
but sorry, I’m colder, I’m wearing this now.
We’d been to see a concert
at Madison Square Garden,
and they were all there,
Billy, Dave, Hayley,
to celebrate your birthday five days early.
They knew, you knew
every single word,
hurling them at the band
like verbal snowballs,
your hair a brunette blur,
strobe lights in our eyes.
We left with headaches
bursting open as flowers,
sweat trapped in my fringe.
Dave was into you,
did I ever mention that?
He’s been to see you
and sometimes speaks
but he finds it difficult.
We all do if I’m honest.
Anyway, we took the F
and then the J.
By 11.56 we were tired
but not quite tired enough.
I was going to walk you home
but we never left those steps.
We looked up and down the street,
said what cars we liked and why.
A Honda HRV, avocado-green
stood out to you, a hulking skeleton of metal
I said looked ugly.
You were lonely then.
Any attention was guzzled up, I could tell.
I rambled on so much
it stopped sounding English
but there was giggling, smiling,
puffs of breath whirling away from us.
You told me your only friend
was your reflection in store windows.
Surely not true.
We all said that.
Hayley told you to snap out of it
but you didn’t know how to snap out.
And when you rang on Friday morning
we all should have listened,
clutching our phones
making sense of it all.
Now you won’t remember
and there’s blood on my wrist.
that came from someone else.
Written: July 2015.
Explanation: A poem written in my own time, deliberately kept quite simple. Not as good as I wanted it to be. Not based on real events - locations are used fictitiously. The names stem from Billie Joe Armstrong (lead singer of Green Day), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) and Hayley Williams (Paramore).
All feedback welcome. Please see my home page on HP for a link to my Facebook writing page.
NOTE: Many older poems will be removed from HP in the coming months.