can the difference between
one
and another
actually just literally be
how horny
it makes you
to sit or to lie
perfectly still
against a setting sun on a life
that you’d known
for twice
as long
as anyone else’s
by this time
it’s got
multiple moons
and
crazed loons
and
choosing the light
over the night
and
what it means
to start
under
or over
that penniless
happy
little
mess

I can’t even say I miss my real friends, all I can say is I miss people that changed, but people change, and hard, fast, and it happens quickly under my nose, and then I put metal in my nose, I met a girl who did the same, and so we were the same, unchanged at that moment, so similar and the same which are not the same thing, but anyway, we were essential and purely one girl who hated change, so I outlawed the poison people and inhaled new girl, real friend, my girlfriend who’s single and so’m I, because the more we change the more we are I, I look like one, breathing like that, eventually going flat, beauty upon looking back, yes that’s all I want, yes I love the world, yes this is full.

I can’t help being a creep just sometimes I want to remember, repeat; so I go and I go and we go around-town round-about ways, way far out, ways to sort of sort out this chasing what isn’t there, what was never there, what I imagined to be there when I had orange longer hair and I matched wheat fields and you came out of left-field and sort of fucked up everything in a far-out way, sort of tucked me in to a sewing circle of a bed of thumbs and tacks and no nails were left on me to reverse the sheets; the sheets fell like rain.

But there’s your house still cause it doesn’t move still even when I dream it being knocked down by a tornado, volcano, but there’s your house sitting still, won’t move won’t budge no matter the way I rearrange it in my mind, it’s still, you’re still, my mind, my all mine, you don’t mind being mine, I guess we’re stuck together, pesky neighbour that is the tack in glue I once held, knew, fingertips black and blue and I swing and I swing and I miss everything but you and I can’t wring that wrong you lent me; I’m counting to two.

Through a maze of trees I think about which branches are broken and which didn’t exist the last time I looked, saw your porch light, smiled and exhaled except this time I filter the backside of your house, its very spine and founding bones, with cigarette smoke, just think think thinking about time and patterns — how both change so fast and you’re not yourself and neither am I, that’s why we don’t talk but that’s not why I’m staring — you told me summer before we started at the new school how you “thought” you loved me and I responded the same as I am now — running from woods to sliding glass door as soon as the garage breaks open, maddening color splotches sent shooting from the fronts to backs of my eyes, probably my spine and very foundation — I don’t think time took you from me, just my heated eyes and sprinting feet and disinterest in anything following a pattern.

Maybe if you broke open your garage and ran though the trees and created a new path, maybe then, but you didn’t and I’m here now with my hair upside down, drying slowly, maybe dying slowly, just thinking about time and patterns and why they happen or don’t.