I'm glad today that I wore my belt,

Oh the shock that I would have felt,

Imagine the shame,

With nobody to blame,

From what I'd shown in Church when I knelt,

in my mother's basement
once upon a time she ******* a clothes line
though most of the time
the line
was used to hang up
hangers
precariously hooked to a rope becoming less taut
as the years go on

the paradox of garage sale hand-me-downs of broken homes
as bodies for clothes become subtracted they make room for memories
we grow heavier by
as the hangers continue to multiply unused
clothes hangers are sacred
they are ghost as zygotes

back then there were days
I would wear my woven leather belt for an inverted neck tie
on those days
tie the other end to the wooden cross supports in the basement ceiling
then tip-toeing up
on a beat-up old stool
play chicken
a game of chicken with nobody
a side of extra mc chicken sauce for the soul

I wonder now
how if anyone would've wondered
if I had died never really learning how to wear a belt
or how to properly tie a neck-tie
kids today wear their pants too low
and parents back then were way too given to involuntary penance

to up the ante
I would write a list on the wooden beams in the ceiling
each time I got up there
for all the reasons I got up there
in attempt to embellish the exit sign
singing ugly duckling swan song echo
sedated by the attempt
training wheels for Icarus syndrome

it wasn't that my youth was in disillusion
I just never really learned how to measure distance properly
a pair of breaking parents
an unwanted pregnancy
"What's with in arms' reach?"
a game of catch
a game of release
a flight of stairs in one step
"it's not your fault kid
but you're gonna have to get hurt anyway"

funny how when you are teetering on stoic infinity
balanced like an idle pendulum
a noose becomes a life-support system
dance like no one is watching

I don't play those games anymore
my bones have gotten too heavy to bet against
memories I still wish to change
knees too weighted to two-step the precipice
on weekends

and since practicing how to use my legs again
and again
I now prefer walking this earth
wearing my belt around my equator
over drawstrings around my neck

the basement has since been renovated
no more wooden crosses
exposed in the ceiling
I don't play childish games anymore
I just do my laundry there

Irony; moving
Sun Belt woman to Zone 6b
decrying each freeze

Perhaps I was just,
Another notch on your belt,
Of the 84 women you've ever dated.

I like to think,
What we had was far deeper,
For it lasted four times longer,
Than any of your others.

But you moved right on,
As if we had been nothing,
But a gust of wind in the summer:
Beautiful, but fleeting

When the sun hid behind
a cover of trees
You shone with the intensity
of the full moon.
Stars in your eyes
like twilight skies,
Beetlejuice, Orion's belt;
the big and little spoons.

I used to tie knots in my dad's shoe laces when he came over, so he could stay for a minute longer.
I'd block the door until he raised his voice, then strain to hear his truck pull away.
Fishing line,
Hospital tubes,
And that belt I tried to ****** myself with last October have made knots that he could of untied.
But I never invited him to come over.

In the oiled vat of sadness
Slip of the tongue
Whimpering in the not-moment
Lost the scent of you

Because…. because, because
Because because was, because is, because will
Maybe
Was is, will is, then now, you me
Probably