the past
how frightening

(i got to thinking
too hard today
this morning driving
by my past)

the thought that what
we call tomorrow will
soon be what we call
an elusive yesterday

(choke your way through
asthmatic games of dodgeball
and forward rolls on blue gym mats
friday midnights of twirling and
swirling through some
bb-gun pockmarked
plate glass reflection of the
lonelier girl you used to be)

that the moment we
put a thought down on
a page is the moment it
no longer holds control

(drown in the square idea
of blue glasses of water under
your chair and a thousand
and one calibrated mistakes
a one-millionth of a light-year
distilled to a drop of sweat)

because it's just
plain gone and
nobody can get it
back except in retrospect

(i think i spent a lifetime
of ten and twelve a.m's
sliding over the
worst of your tiles
but ten and twelve
a.m. are very different
times and that was a very
different lifetime ago)

growing up is
the worst when
it's done in the
worst ways

a childhood to
exist and a
lifetime to
forget.