My Face is held on with old shoelaces
loose and sagging at the top
the grease stained hat holds it together
tight and neat till my shift is over.

My leg bones are gone,
transformed into balloon animals.
silly, flimsy things that wouldn't stay inflated
if not for the bicycle pump
I keep in my back pocket.

Every few hours I slip into the bathroom
just to sit and awkwardly fill up my legs,
Tom & Jerry style, through my big toes.

I say I try to live in the moment,
but I don't when I'm here.

Daydreams about suspiciously well prepared hoboes:
"No cash? That's fine. I have a card reader."
Memories of friends and stupid mistakes;
the smile is real, but the eyes...

the eyes are where I fool them
the eyes are where I hide the fact
that my mind is anywhere, everywhere else.
My eyes will never tell you that here,
I wish for summer to be over.
That here, I'm scared to death
that three years from now, I'll still be here,
and summer's end won't mean ****.

The only friend I have here
says I remind him of himself.
He is pushing six years.
I just passed two.

So.

I want you to beat me into unconsciousness
with a giant, squeaky toy hammer.

The kind you can only get at the fair
for fifteen dollars or feats of mild greatness
confiscated within the first ten minutes.
Silliness so intense that our parents
destroyed it as contraband
to protect us from the poison,
our bloodlust of absurdity.

Club me in the head with it.

Please.

I want my legs to deflate.

I want to be a giggling mound of confusion,
rolling around on the floor,
within inches of enlightenment.

I want my hat to fall off,
my shoestrings to come untied,
and this stupid mask to splinter into tiny,
stupid pieces and form onto a real, stupid grin.

But most of all, I want every single note
of your noisy and utterly useless inflatable bludgeon
to be the first thing on my mind
the next time I walk around here
in my slip resistant sneakers
scuffling along the greasy tile floor.