I see you in the park.
I want to look at you.
You want to look at me.
Our eyes ricochet
off each other.
I can't catch you
looking at me.
I can’t even give
a smile to you.
You’re Alcatraz and
I’m swimming to your rocks
and when I get there
you'd rather stay in jail,
kissing the walls.
There is no you. There are a thousand yous.
I know no you. I see 30 yous an hour.
Where are you?
Are you out there?
You’ve got to stay away. You get too close
and you crumble,
or I crumble. Gravity sends
two lives shaking into screws, identities
unable to hold.
But I could know how fragile you are.
How you sit on an iron bench and open
your long, dark lens
to the ultraviolet April blooms.
Shamble into my arms.
I won’t laugh. I promise I won’t laugh.
I’ll break your fall.
It’s my mistake to think
that you’re fragile, that
you’re a flower.
You are a flower, but
flowers are only
advertisements
for the tree.
Flowers fall away early
leaving only the wide, armored waist.
It isn’t you that will crumble.
It’s only me.
Feb 9, 2014
Feb 9, 2014 at 12:21 PM UTC
I see you in the park.
I want to look at you.
You want to look at me.
Our eyes ricochet
off each other.
I can't catch you
looking at me.
I can’t even give
a smile to you.
You’re Alcatraz and
I’m swimming to your rocks
and when I get there
you'd rather stay in jail,
kissing the walls.
There is no you. There are a thousand yous.
I know no you. I see 30 yous an hour.
Where are you?
Are you out there?
You’ve got to stay away. You get too close
and you crumble,
or I crumble. Gravity sends
two lives shaking into screws, identities
unable to hold.
But I could know how fragile you are.
How you sit on an iron bench and open
your long, dark lens
to the ultraviolet April blooms.
Shamble into my arms.
I won’t laugh. I promise I won’t laugh.
I’ll break your fall.
It’s my mistake to think
that you’re fragile, that
you’re a flower.
You are a flower, but
flowers are only
advertisements
for the tree.
Flowers fall away early
leaving only the wide, armored waist.
It isn’t you that will crumble.
It’s only me.
