Here to a lifetime of laughs
A lifetime of wondering
why you’re still here
your past is full of cobwebs
and there nothing I could say
to make the spiders go away
there’s a future, where you never finish
your books, watch only the first
half of movies because you’re afraid
of endings
you’re underneath a waterfall made from
tears you’ve collected over the years
and your body cups it
holds it in-between the spine
and heart, where they’ll never find it

One day, after a year
you were walking on a path coated
with fallen leaves
along the sides magnolias grew
endlessly
there was a bench that you sat on
holding tattoos from people
that didn’t know how to express
the way they felt
so they whispered it in to the wood with pens
or anything sharp
and this guaranteed them a way back
you sat there reading them
running your fingers across the markings
back and forth slowly like hieroglyphics

One day, after your first year of college
you found him tucked behind
the corner of the library
reading encyclopedias about the modern world
and you asked him
“Why are you reading that?”
and he said
“Because I want to know if the ending’s good or not.”