he asked lots of questions.
he reminded me of the type of person who
would shotgun 4, 5, maybe an entire
6 pack of rainier at noon on a sunday then
go take a very long nap with a fluffy cat (or 10).
sweet fruit, hot april days, future hendrix
on the highway. his eyes sparkled like sun rays
reflecting through window panes when he
was on deck and you know there’s no way
i woulda told him that when i went home
that saturday night i could still feel
his tears burning through the fabric of my t-shirt.

i had never met anybody so passionate
about the life they lived. i had never met somebody who made life seem like a dusty pink haze
where everything was
beautiful and nothing hurt, a silver screen dream etched into a harsh reality.

the man behind us in the check-out line at the
texaco off of 525 could tell from my
messy hair and blank stares that number 4 would die for me but i wouldn’t do **** for him.
they all thought i was sick because
i didn’t cry when my friends went
to heaven. lola said all i needed was
someone who would listen.
i hated emotion.
we weren’t ever close and i don’t know
how he did it but something about him
made me want to live like i wasn’t gonna
be alive by friday night, and i’ll never know
how i felt compelled to do it
but i suddenly wanted to show him the words
that i swore i’d never let anyone see.

he fired ‘em white rats,
he loved ‘em OG hally rats,
he was a lil’ crazy kid who made the girl
who wrote 3 page poems about nothing and had a weakness for nicotine feel like she mattered.
and i wrote about him a lot that year – it wasn’t
because i was in love with him or
anything like that because i still,
to this day doubt that anything or anyone
will ever change the fact that i don’t
believe in the webster’s dictionary
definition of love.

i was intrigued by him.
so intrigued that i couldn’t tell anyone
how i felt without them thinking
i was insane in the head.
so i put him on paper.

-*z. vega