Anniversary

Like Sunflowers

Why am I only capable

of admiring the world

around me

for brief moments

at a time?

/

I’m walking on this path

surrounded by

beautiful plants and flowers.

Some of these look like sunflowers

but they’re smaller

with a crimson core that bleeds

out onto yellow tipped petals.

/

They’re everywhere.

/

Some of them are fully blossomed,

outstretched and demanding attention.

/

There’s other flowers that

also look like sunflowers.

Their petals are completely yellow,

but they’re not sunflowers.

They’re a lot smaller.

/

I’m sure there was a plaque

or something to say what it is

I’m looking at but I was too

caught up in my own head,

incapable of admiring

the world around me.

/

Now the only plaque

in front of me reads

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

that’s next to a bunch of small

bike wheels that have been welded

together

and painted a firehouse red.

The way they’ve been welded

has shaped them

so that collectively

they kind of look like

an onion carriage.

/

I don’t understand the name.

I don’t understand the sculpture.

I don’t understand art.

/

There’s birds sitting on top of the sculpture.

There’s bird shit under the sculpture.

I’m glad the birds like it.

Maybe they know something I don’t.

Maybe they know what these flowers are called.

Maybe, just maybe,

they’re capable of admiring the world

better than I can.

/

Or maybe they just need a place to shit.

---

There’s a Seat Here if You’d Like

Two men sit beside each other in a café.

The open seat between them is reserved for

someone willing to sacrifice personal space

for some leg rest.

/

A woman enters the café and orders a latte.

After ordering, she takes the seat in between the two men.

One man crosses his arms,

the other sits up straight.

The one that crosses his arms looks at the woman and

then looks away.

The one who sits up straight looks at the woman and

then looks away.

The woman waits for her latte while her ears ring.

/

How about this weather?

the crossed armed man asks, unprompted.

Yeah.

The woman responds, knowing the comment

was directed at her without looking over.

The room gets quiet again.

/

What did you order?

The man who sat up straight asks.

A latte.

The woman responds, without looking at the man.

/

Latte!

The barista yells.

The woman gets up, grabs her drink,

and walks out of the café.

/

The two men sit in silence again.

They will sit there quietly until

another woman decides her legs are too tired to stand.

---

We’re Gonna See the World Together

First you meet someone

and then you look them

in the eyes for too

long and start making

promises to each

other about the

world and how much of

it you’ll see together.

/

They say to you,

I’ve always wanted

to travel and see the seven wonders

and so you say to them,

Wow! Me too! We should

see all of them together!

Together.

They agree with you

when you say that.

/

But conversations become

fewer and further between

until eventually

you’re so far away

from each other

that no plane, train, or

automobile can

close the distance.

/

You are strangers once

again with the whole

world to explore

alone.

---

Whose Hand was That?

Get your fucking head out of the gutter.

/

A dream, spoken into the air while

you’re awake becomes a fantasy.

/

So when you had that dream where you and that girl

played with each others fingers before you interlocked

your hands it was best that you

kept that shit in your sleep.

/

Remember Romeo,

It takes two to tango and that

girl doesn’t want to dance with you.

/

Keep that shit in your dreams.

/

Cause while you’ve been awake,

you’ve never held that girls hand.

/

And the thing is, your brain can’t

make this shit up.

/

So even in your dream,

it wasn’t her hand you were holding but someone else’s.

/

Think about that and ask yourself,

/

Whose hand were you holding last night,

/

and why don’t you want to let go of it?

---

Love Letters Don’t Hurt Anymore

Love letters don’t hurt anymore.

/

Your letters were

Handwritten with a purpose

that was fulfilled years ago.

Your writings are a reminder of that purpose;

A reminder of love.

Your words, carefully inked onto

construction paper, hold

assurances of unconditional loyalty that

weren’t lies but dated truths.

/

We had conversations like these often.

/

You’d ask me if I’d love you forever

and I’d say that in that moment,

my answer was yes.

You didn’t like that.

You heard it and recognized it

for what it was:

A self-fulfilling prophecy.

/

And now,

here I am,

caught in the gray space that

exist between

love

and

loss.

/

To say that I always loved you

is to do no justice to the fact

that I always loved you;

Even when I didn’t.

/

I got headaches from your demands

for the bare minimum,

Do you love me?

Yes.

Do you love me??

Yes.

Do you love me???

I said yes.

/

Said but never shown,

an absentee lover is useless.

/

Words are just words;

And to dress up the word

love

in italics doesn’t make it more than it is.

/

Inkblots turn one cent pieces of paper into

love letters but they can not turn

indifference into love or

make promises last forever. 

---

One Trick Pony

Determined to not be a one trick pony,

I’m going to write some optimistic

celebration of life that isn’t preceded

by a death in the family.

/

Who said the time for cliché is behind us,

that waking up and smelling the coffee so you can get out the door to smell the roses is a bad thing?

/

But remember that rose stems have thorns on them

and will cut the skin on your finger in an

effort to ruin your day.

You’ll start to think  that

flowers aren’t for sniffing but for gifting.

/

You’ll give flowers to your lover 

and make love every day while

they slowly go limp and die in a corner of the room

because they were never supposed to be taken out

of the sun in the first place.

/

Maybe just stop taking things away from

where the world puts them the first time around.

Maybe smell the roses and then keep going about

your day because the day isn’t about smelling flowers,

It’s about everything else you do after you’ve smelled them.

/

And remember that all the flowers in the world

could be growing out of your asshole and it wouldn’t

matter one bit if you were still looking in

the mirror and hating what you see.

/

Fuck the mirror

and fuck your asshole Flowers.

No more of the fantasies;

Because you don’t need to live out a fantasy to

feel like you might just be doing things right.

---