sickening to think
you could have always had this
if you tried.
to take three steps back,
and find yourself here.
Amongst your peers.
peers you never had back home
in your
world
your own personal prosopography,
stretching back yards and miles of
lonely lonely turf
weeds pulling out of clumps of
dead grass
that you never thought to tend to.
it’s different, of course,
but it’s all the same.
When hasn’t it been?
Those faces you see,
you could swear you saw
if you tried hard enough
faces when you were young
smiling too.
They weren’t there.
Were they ever?
if you tried hard enough
standing right there
hand in hoof in hand in
were you always this lonely?
little books found in
cracks and corners of
rotting memory
never probed for
lack of need
a colt who cried when you
said no
why now?
but here. in front of you.
flesh and blood.
that same river
flooding back to you
younger years in dress up
ahead, the puppets that
swing and canter
fold over you in their dances
that seem so close
but feel so far
you don’t need this
little drops of
swirls of
dancing in your head
laughing at you
begging you to take one more step
into that same river
telling you you can
breathe underwater
young,
young,
young,
young
people
having fun
it’s sickening to