Barefoot Ingenue

a white lettered inquiry

onto the pavement of our interactions:

under the road, just after the place where

the rapids became safe.

But it wasn't real. 

Two weeks before summer ended

in the parking lot I hugged 

my new best friend goodbye.

If we'd never kissed,

I'd remember him,

green eyes laughing, tossing 

a smile back over

his shoulder, pedaling away

burst through silver chain link fence,

fly over two dumpsters in the

middle of a crowd. 

A collection of moments

our hearts tried to beat with

half-empty, echoes like a cavern.

How, a year ago tonight, I slept

on a bed made from the boxes 

of clothes I'd carried out the front door of my

red-brick childhood home and up

this flight of orange carpeted stairs. 

That first night, a short, borrowed, lamp

cast a ghostly circle on my ceiling. 

I forgot how happy we were that first 

night, how even after hours of cleaning I

couldn't stop smiling. It took hours and hours

for me to finally sleep. I wonder

if whoever comes after us, will be happy

like that. Now, alone in our once again

half-empty apartment,

I'm already homesick-

for this place that I love,

someday

I'll make peace

with the fact that my heart,

like my hair,

kind of does

what it wants. 

An entity swayed by 

its moods and thoughts,