moree words

i tried to hold you hand but my palms were soaked with all the times that i missed your lips, but this time your hand was invisible and no matter how hard i tried i could never put my palm against yours again. / a bus driver with an imaginary friend—sleepwalking to the beat of the drum that he played every morning at 5am to alert them it was almost time; contra mundum—not quite defiance yet / hold me before you know me, it will be wound that won’t ever heal if you wait until tomorrow / she checked your pulse because it looked as if you were living in a dream again / and they wrapped their arms together but it was not a hug, because no one else brought their feelings to this park bench anymore / he was the plant she only bothered watering when the weeds starting obscuring the view of her neighbors pet canary / ‘those children are at it again aren’t they? fireworks, leaving pins in the road, i tell you we might as well call the terrorists to tell them a new bully is in town’ / it’s not his choice it’s hers, she decided to let go of those words, she decided to lie because her memory would eventually do the same, she decided to pick up where she left off and pack up the part of herself that wore dresses everyday and complained when the sun wasn’t out, the same sun that flashed through the doorway every time he knocked at the door, it was illuminated for a while, but once he started coming back, the colors had faded and the day lights savings ended with it / why do you keep waking me up? I told you I’m not ready yet / would thomas ever be? the television they inserted in his brain could monitor the things he hoped for, but dreams, they are the end of his fantasy, he takes it with him to school, plays the part in gym class, during lunch hours, on the playlot waiting for mom’s blue van to pull up, ‘his condition is unusual,’ said dr. young, ‘but he could try to stop it.’ / warning signs, the street would go curvy and the lines would wrap around me like a rope, i was not suffocated, but every face that came my way was blurry / and when she looked in the mirror she saw the same one from twenty years prior, longer face, and more wrinkles in the brow, where were the smile lines they had promised? / she tried to survive but every chance they took it and the words back tracking her mind ‘your changing color in my eyes,’ she had been wading in the wrong water, and the affects were sure to show up by next month /