It’s morning and very still and I’m walking perpendicular to three or four hundred but I’m their audience I stop to take a breath while Hunter Morris ninteenfiftytwototwothousandandone lays silently below me every time I breath out my breath floats to join the crowd but they’re really below me it’s hard seeing things for how they really are it’s Monday in December and somewhere in the city people press against each other as they walk -don’t tell me there’s not enough room- like hamsters huddling for warmth in a corner I ignore the dew and sit in the grass and
try to not be so much

You were something I heard
From across the room
Faintly
In passing

You were a rumor
An aside
Delicately whispered
(my eardrums abide)

Although I could not make out your words
I got the gist of you
And you stuck in my head
Like gum under a classroom desk

It’s pretty late
You’re standing across the room, talking to someone or something but I’m just here
These are your friends after all
But you look sad, like me
Like usual

Someone’s pouring me a drink and
I‘ve got that ichy feeling you get when you shouldn’t smoke your last cigarette
But you know you will
They say something to me and laugh

I’m sandwiched between a fantasy and crushing reality
like beautiful ideas that become **** when you write them down on paper
My feet are shaking, ready to move (anywhere)
I am the inches of terrible terrible air
Between the fruit on the tree and your fingertips
(you, tied to the ground, like me)

You can shout all you like, Tantalus
I know you
You’re just like me
We’ll never get anywhere
We’re frozen assets
We’re “get well soon” cards given out in the ******* cancer ward
We’re racecars stuck in the mud

But what do I know?
Why are we even here?
Do we have anywhere else to go?
I know it’s late
2:45 in the morning and raining
But I’ve got a third a tank of gas
and you’ve got that look in your eye
let’s get the **** out of here.

When I was young the earth was too
Me, organic barren mirror
The feeling of impending time
Feeling life becoming clearer

Though young I noticed towering trees
In lines, at random how they stand
Together reaching for above
But miles above my outstretched hand

Strong like soldiers at their posts
Always standing, always there
Their bark was scratched, but they stood straight
And I felt safer for their wear

We almost stayed there the whole night, a debt we thought we’d owe
I spent that time talking to you
And said how we should go

Did we error in sharing everything, even our biting woe?
You helped me and I helped you too
But paid less than was owed

Winter came, and how we felt the coldness of the snow!
You told me I’m an okay *****
But now I ought to go

But in our house our love lingered, it’s putrid status quo
Heaped on our floor a pile accrued
Of debts we came to owe

We let our shame gestate in you, then cut it from below
We’re too young to know what to do
Too poor to pay the debts we owe
I guess that I should go

Her faith it heals, her mind protects
In fear of love her heart erects
A wall of stone to keep away
The visitor her heart expects

Her virtue will not let her stray
To thoughts of him or let replay
The memories edging at her heart
By night she'll kneel down to pray

"Oh please Oh God set me apart
Give me strength, a brand new start"
Her logic, though, is deeply flawed
As love is strong but not too smart

Each day she's building her facade
And always keeping him abroad
By night beside her bed she'll laud
Love's absence in the name of God

Stopped in a field and down to lay
The night the land, no stars no trees
I've found an empty place to stray
Just me, the grass, the friendly breeze

Which washes over me in waves
Snoring bugs asleep below
Beneath my head a million graves
How far they stretch, too far to know

Or guess by clues from eyes alone
(Dark air Dark ground, they coalesce)
Morning sun makes its vastness known,
But for now the tired field digress

-es from crazed chaotic noon
Now darkness a blanket Earth adorns
And I a child in its womb
Not quite ready to be born

Soon bright day will pull me back
Life's a runner that few outrun
But here I float beside the black
The sleeping bugs, the coming sun.