Mid-year report
The headlines
We have no new friends, only old
ones we see differently and far
less frequently now, caught up in
the work of turning a key in the lock
of the day to see what’s on the other
side, hoping and dreading it’ll be
exactly as we’d left it. We joke about
a lot of things and we laugh about
a lot of things but we are dead
serious about the things we want
to get right, even if we can’t always
be honest about them. We find photos
we don’t remember taking, our eyes
closed and our faces out of focus
and some days a line from a song
we thought we’d outgrown quietly
sneaks up on us while we stand
in line for coffee or pastries or
cash, something about sitting
together beneath a mango tree.
I know you have to go soon so
I’ll give you the headlines: We are
bored out of our minds and we are
fucked out of our minds and this
world is relentless and insufferable
and resplendent and of course we
have our whole lives ahead of us
and of course there is never enough
time. Why is that? There is someone.
There is always someone, waiting
back home for the sound of our
footsteps, the clomping of soles on
a wooden floor and, breaths later, bare
feet rushing up the stairs to meet them.