There once was a man with a life very kind
Until he was taken away
Now he's alone with the thoughts in his mind
And he never does like what they say

His memories hurt and his dreams are so good
That it's difficult just to wake up
Because life isn't kind anymore to the man
It's easier just to give up

His days are a hole so his brain fills the time
By telling him tales of the past
It showed him the things he had done to survive
The journey to failure was fast

He'd be here forever, alone in this place
A prisoner in his own mind
He'd run far away, change his name and his face
But his captors would chase him in kind

All he had was a mind now tormented with grief
That it gave him depression and tears
He needed an out, to turn a new leaf
In order to live out the years

He scrounged up a pencil and paper as well
And then he began to write
Things of no consequence, letters and poems
In an effort to emulate flight

When the words started coming, he first couldn't tell
That he no longer felt so alone
His thoughts were too focused on what to write next
That the writing itself was his home

He wrote on the page for a day and a night
Then he folded and put it aside
In a package of paper, stuffed tight in a box
That was red with a slot in the side

A man came to get them, the pages he wrote
To see what the people would say
But nobody knew what to do with the words
So they laughed and they threw them away

He never escaped, there isn't a smile
And the end of this woe riddled tale
Just a message to leave in the hopes you'll receive
A discarded man's thoughts in the mail.

Soft words and unspoken terms
You're like
Mystery, it moves within you

Soft lips and your mystic hips
They move
Beautifully, with form and passion

Rough guile, and your cunning style
You are
Duplicity, tricking my senses

I stop halfway up 12th street
and stand there, letting cars pass me
not moving an inch.
I want to stay there
standing in the freezing rain
staring at the last curve of the road
until I fall over
frozen and soaked to the bone
waiting for someone to stop,
to get out, wrap me in a hug
and pull me to their car.
but I know  nobody will
that I'll die here
forgotten on a busy road
so I continue on
back to my empty, useless, repetitive life.

It was the time of summer where every kid had silently realized that it was ending,
No longer halfway through, no longer half full
Leaking and spilling out,
like the gas in my twenty two year old car
We couldn’t stop it,
And the moments of high school summertime
The moments that supposedly turn into stories we tell forever
Hadn’t seemed to have happened.

Both of us on the swing lazily swung
Dizzily from side to side.
Climbing forward, falling in reverse
Our combined bodyweight shifting back and forth
Tanned legs kicking up in an attempt at unison on every backwards glide.
Gravity hung us there,
Pulling the swing toward the ground no matter the rotation.

I sat on top.
I wore bleached shorts and bleached hair.
I worried that gravity or more so my value to it
would crush him.


At the same time, I felt unbelievably small.


The air pressed in on me from all angles,
it touched my bare legs
it easily waffled my shirt.

“Mel, if you were squishing me, I would let you know”,
he assured with a cocky tone of his very own that somehow made me feel special.
I couldn’t help but think he was only trying to be tough
Attempting to let sheer willpower overweigh my well earned quads,
My six foot frame.
The awkward body I never quite grew into
Never knew how to masterfully control
Never knew how to fill.
Though I secretly (wanted to) truly believe him

On this humid night I felt like the ball was in my court,
Like I could do anything and everything.
That nothing could go wrong
That the boy that I was sitting on was genuine
And that I could simply drive off to wherever.

(I had a full tank of gas and enough money to get me to Alabama).

I felt small in this,
in this infinity of possibility all around me.
Like a weight was pushing into me
Putting on pressure that couldn’t be ignored
That shrunk me just enough.
I felt powerless to fate
Powerless to this planet
To this grand, glorified hunk of earth which was so much greater than me
(and surely my insignificant weight anxieties).

I felt like the gas was leaking out faster than I could use it.
I felt like my infinity was disappearing as I swung within it.


Just like that, I let the ball drop and the gas leak out.
We just kept swinging.
Laughing,
Wasting,
Talking,

Dying.