i walked towards the red and yellow mass with jean shorts suffocating the place above my belly button
the 60 second walk mattered more to me than the threaded shirt that was returned to me

last night
i watched us simultaneously bob our heads to a beat we were still unsure of; despite his casually unbuttoned t-shirt or backpack on my shoulder blades, trying too hard to convince ourselves that we withhold knowledge no one else possesses

i waved away 3 months and stepped forward
thinking about that platform just below the right side of your heart
and wondering how long it took to reconstruct

i wiped off grimy paint and liquid courage applied from a slim black bottle that held more promise than my fingers do with  ink

i witnessed an exchange between two recently heartbroken fools,
trying to express what they had lost within themselves, and had but the slightest clue about how to regain it

i wavered on your eyes but i didnt receive their exchange
i washed out the colors and replaced them with new ones, new ones you'd never seen before
i wished, and i waited.
always waiting, always wishing.
and now i have run out of words that start with 'w'.
except one that i think you may know already;

want.

this summer has been a mix of intoxications.
of infatuations and complications.
someone who wanted to spend the entire summer
together no longer wants to communicate past a simple
"hello".  
someone who i wanted to spend the entire summer with vanished after the final graduation celebration.
my closest brother took one step too far off the diving board
and closed his eyes before he knew someone was there to save him.
the perspiration on my good friends lip caused me to turn away in fear of change and therefore abandonment.
I'll leave this hometown
in less than two weeks.
Summer will be over and all its intoxicating breaths.

As I'm reading other authors poems I can't help but silently agree that poetry is a secret language.
Wondrous explosions of words
become magical and yet those reading may feel completely different feelings from those writing.
And yet, that mystery, the self-giving that poetry is becomes a release.
So we sit and we write.
About the day's fluorescence or a lovers escapade;
we turn our poetry into songs, into peace offerings, into dedications.
Wherever that person is sitting at that computer desk, or that cemented garden we are all here.
In love with something we ourselves cannot fully grasp.
In love with more than the idea of something,
in love with words.

it is hard to imagine a ground on which i could securely stand.
or a foundation that i could retreat back to in times of distress or dismay or distrust.
that same transparent foundation has taught me mistrust.
by stark contrast,
that absence has taught me to
extract happiness from sources, such as the way the sun searches for a vacant piece of earth to glow upon,  
or the cracks in the sidewalk…
supposedly, there are two people in this entire world who I am to value even more greatly than the  180 minutes that are my favorite of the entire day.  
i am supposed to rely on their sturdiness much more than relying on a dilapidated mistake in the pavement .
however, now all i want to see is that pavement, becoming a secure barrier between the things i cannot understand