12/30/14 “Everywhere”
I want to go everywhere.
I want to know everything
But everyone can wait.
There’s a little man standing in the middle of the floor.
A spotlight is on him with the harshness of an interrogation.
He appreciates it because it hints at law and order.
But he knows that it is on him because he has broken that law.
His sweater vest is argyle in red and black and cream,
and his hair is side parted, but wind-tossed and fluffed.
He is a narrow person, but not thinly spread.
His hands are fiddling.
His heart is beating out a slow and steady tempo.
His eyes are worried.
But he continues to stand there, under speculation by a whispering crowd
who point at his skinny ankles with their preppy socks
showing too much because he’s outgrown the length of his trousers.
He won’t sit down.
The thin girl is sitting someplace on some bench,
hiding at the back of the whispering crowd.
Sometimes she feels somewhat crushed
and stepped on by the world.
She fears she exaggerates her unhappiness.
So she smiles and grits her teeth and thinks of other things.
There are things to be cheerful about.
Some things.
She jumps up and hugs her friend.
There are things to be cheerful about.
Some things.
The friend she hugs is not a person.
She is a tangled mass of thoughts and feelings.
If she thinks too much, if she feels too much,
she might explode quietly in the middle of the crowd.
And maybe some will notice
a fact about the density of the planet Venus
floating away.
Or maybe they will hear a throbbing note
from who knows what song, but it’s powerful,
and feel an uncomfortable choking feeling,
and tears bathing their eyeballs in saline solution.
Let us pray she doesn’t explode.
I saw these three.
And I saw myself.
Won’t sit down.
Won’t lose hope.
Let us pray I don’t explode.