Poem Spot - [ on the spot ]

I trail gently behind my friends,
the innocent one, they call me.
Everyone around me walks hand in hand—
everyone except for me.

They don’t worry about me.
I’m the “innocent” one, after all,
the one who doesn’t know
the things they joke about.
So they talk and talk,
careful with their words,
careful not to go too far.

And when I thought there was one,
they were pulled from beneath my feet—
from the place I used to stand,
from the place I used to be.
Distance did the choosing for me.
I guess it’s the innocent life for me.

I look to my right, I look to my left.
For a moment, I think I’ve found
someone like me,
standing in the same position,
outside the circle of hands.

I thought we could have just friendship,
two people wanting what was already taken,
nothing romantic between us—

But under certain circumstances,
the taken becomes yours.
Timing shifts, distance closes,
and suddenly you are chosen
in a way I never am.

So it’s only the innocent life for me—
walking just behind,
loving quietly,
holding what I am
without apology,
even when the world
moves on without me.

bird flies outside the
window, blue dusted sky here
early morning soft

we, she and I, glided up Johnson Street toward anywhere packed with reason and meaning, travel-wrung after hours of work and play like characters in a Greek tragicomedy. I sat behind the barricade between the street, the bar, and the park overlooking that glistening pause-asterisk of water. we were alone with the city, and the city was alone with us.

trailing behind, I could’ve sworn I saw you signaling for the rest of your entourage to approach more slowly, as if the city were to be won from the Mongol horde at Baghdad’s eastern gate in A.D. 1258. somewhere between the little eyelid movies drizzling through my mind, she would shiver to the beat of our escapist sentiments, and exclaim, "this is the only version of us that’s actually real!"

there is skin beneath my fingernails,
a healthy glowing salmon pink
shining beneath ridged keratin,
surrounded by the jagged edges
of my cuticles, which have become
discolored over time and currently
have the hue of dirty white sneakers.

there are ripples that sully the keratin
and the cuticles are ripped to ribbons
but beneath the imperfections is
the exact, perfect shade of well-cooked
fish flesh - slightly mottled with creams
and those half-moon monstrosities,
but the color is there and it is healthy
and I suppose I have convinced myself
that I want to - have to - taste it.

It's already someday,
it's been someday a hundred times
and she still hasn't found her people.

She hovers between plastic tables
at a crowded garden party
all of her friends here but also
no one.

She distracts herself doing the dishes
and spilling soap suds on her jeans,
the houseflies buzzing around her head
in the summer heat.

lost in living room stares
watching patterns on the ceiling
visualizing failed attempts to socialize
melting through the mind, sticking to it
legs left to twirl in air
eyes left to watch the boxed-in sky

the words always tangle
on my ears and my mouth
and they ooze down through
my bones to my lungs.
i know your blue veins.
i know your eyes are green
and i have never seen them,
not ever, but i saw your hand twitch,
just once, next to you:
myoclonic jerk,
like you're falling asleep.

I am tired of pearl-clutching.
I will take your necklace,
break it
and throw every pearl
back into the sea.
Now you will stop
shaking the chain
in my face.