I want to be better. But not the kind of better you see on the billboards advertising gyms or the ones mentioned in the hymns sung by entire choirs of liars and deniers of bad desires. I want to be better in the worst way possible.

I want to play air-guitar concerts for stuffed animals, I want to be able to smile in a way that leaves contempt snuffed out like a candle-cap. I want to be able to rap in Chinese.

I want to be able to reinvent the word 'cool', hang out with absolute tools and not just because somebody has to. I want to be able to rule my own mind and mind my own rules. I want to find my running shoes so when I go to the fight behind the dollar store, I'll remember what I bought them for.

I want to be so much more and all these issues I can't ignore be much less. I want to make myself confess how much I love my friends, turn dead-ends into new beginnings and then spend my lottery winnings on a stranger because the only danger I see is never having been able to know them.

The truth is, I'll never be the icon of an attractive guy. I'm never be able to buy a girl a drink and not have her immediately think of what kind of a clod I am that thinks that kind of thing still works.

I keep finding myself trying to rewrite my history where the cliffhanger at the end has a parachute. Where minute details matter less and I can say I tried my best and people noticed.

I will one day be better but I'll always still be me and honestly, I think I'd still sell my inheritance to put enough money down the wishing well to make the two days you were in love with me swell into an eternity.

But we both have other things to be doing than loving someone. We have legacies we have to build on the our bare backs and suicide attacks that need to be led.

And let it be said that I have not  a clue-'n'-half how this turned into a love poem...

but in my head there is a world where in that time and place, I didn't need to be better.

I wasn't perfect. I was good enough.