Four

You stop at my corner and I open the door. Don't get out, I tell myself, say it, say it now. I find meager ways to extend the end of our conversation but your responses get smaller and smaller; seven words, six words, five words, four. Silences grow in their awkwardness, they settle in and really come into themselves. Eventually I have to leave, the door open for minutes now. And I get out and walk, shut the door, walk down the block, away from everything. Ten houses down never seemed so far, the moon never was this dim, and if I never turn around you might be watching me the entire time.

Don't Lift Me Up

I do not want your bearded, beanied nonsense strumming lovesick medleys on your old acoustic. I don't want homemade organic whole wheat pancakes, filled with corner berries and stuffed with chia. Leave your goddamn bike at the door and every word about it. I don't care that you're doing your part because it's pronounced beyond measure.

Don't tell me to love. Don't tell me how much I should love. Don't lift me up and tell me I can do whatever I want, don't say the world is mine. I can't, and it isn't. You woodworking, farmers market, lazy, happy, progressive, tiresome, cigarette-rolling, dreadful, dreadlocked faker. I've seen your kind and I have your number. You only care about caring. And you care about so much, don't you? I bet you can hardly stand it.

Latch and Lock

There are a lot of lamps and a lot of drapes. Enough folds for enough villains, enough reasons to keep the many lights on. Scraping my toenails along the bottom of my foot, ice melting in the bucket, reflections in the window seem to come from outside. I could call down to reception for more locks but they'd only give me silence. I could go down to the lobby and that's what I decide to do, but there are even more lamps, more drapes, there are doors and halls and things to hide behind. So I go back to my room, latch and lock, turn on every light, and crawl into the bath. It's always listed as a hiding place during a disaster, but I've got no escape when they come. If they come. And it seems strange to me that it's the only place where I can fall asleep.

Wet or Cold

If the weather is so bad that we can't even start, that I can't even look at you, we can go inside where I will yell at you proper. I will draw the blinds so we can see the outside world (if there's going to be a storm I want to see it, but I'd like to keep my hair out of my face), and then we can get good and to it. Sit on the couch if you like. Or if we can stay outside we can sit on the grass, and wonder if we're getting wet or merely colder. That's something I've realized over the years. I never know when I am getting colder. It seems, at once, that suddenly I'm cold.

Sundance

I'll go if you ask me to stay. I'm weird that way. I'd like to be enfolded in your arms forever but put one finger on me and I'm off. I'd like to share a room with you, make a life, but get out the swatches and a puff of smoke is all I'll be. A wisp, an idea, and you'll feel silly and I'll have nightmares. But there's loveliness in wanting. Hope and expectation, our best selves, our best us. So let me be here with you for a while, let me love you. And tell me I can stick around and watch me run.

Magic Eye

He sat and stared at the pieces of his life. Went over the whole picture in his mind. It was chaos, it looked that way. But he knew if he looked, if he kept looking, that something, meaning and purpose, would pop out at him. If he stared at the forest he'd begin to see the trees, and even their leaves, and all the little birds' nests. He'd see a Pegasus soaring straight for him, ready to take him away. There would be a number. A pattern, there would be sense in all of this. If he looked, and looked hard, and kept looking.

Confidant

I opened up to a person I didn't know and it was OK. We met through a friend and then she left, got called away, so there we were with cappuccinos. And this other girl, she asked me how I was and I let her know. Honestly? I made sure she wanted honesty. And honestly she did so honesty is what I gave her. And she gave it back, and we talked about parents and church and death and rape and drugs and food and children and gods and monsters and all the things you never should. Maybe because we knew we'd never see each other again. What was left to tell? How could we continue confiding? We knew too much already. But after then we'd have stories about each other and one story about us, and one story about us is all any of us really need.