He puts poetry up on his walls
He rips them out of old, cheap poetry collections printed on cheap pulp paper, the papers coving the walls’ beige paint, leaving small pin holes from the thumb tacks. Most of the poems aren’t very well known, just as many not very good, but he grins when he presses the thumb tacks in and laughs when I tell him they’re bad.
He puts poetry up on his walls
Many of the pages inked with uneven highlighter of all different colors, pointing out the most important lines. Some have writing in the margins, though I know that’s typically reserved for the books he doesn’t rip out, tagging each page with a annotation marker that he finds important, grabbing his favorites from his bag that he always keeps on him and opening up to certain notes, looking to them like some sort of holy scripture when stressed, sitting out on the steps, reading them, closing it again, putting it back in his bag, and taking a deep breath before standing up.
He puts poetry up on his walls
I sit beside him as he carefully unpins one of them, careful not to rip the cheap, delicate paper, handing it to me like it’s precious, and I take it like it’s precious. The ink is uneven and blotchy, some of the letters barely visible, in a typewriter font, the paper cheap and thin, the ink bleeding through the page. It has no high lighter marks, no notes. It’s one of the better ones on his wall. He ask me what I think of it softly, a bit shy. I tell him the truth, and he grins bashfully, pink on his cheeks, the same color of one of his highlighters.
He puts poetry up on his walls
We lay side by side on his bed, together, his poetry hoard spilling up nearly to his ceiling now, the dust floating in the sun setting light. We are so close, only millimeters apart, and yet do not touch. He’s not looking at me, just staring as he whispers sad things about his life, talking more than he ever has and I speak less than I ever could, and listen even more. I can see the tears welling in the corners, wanting to spill, they don’t until he turns his head to me, to ask me if he’s broken. He’s not, I refuse to believe it. Though, after I hesitate for a moment, I tell him if he really was, I would make sure to put him back together. He laughs wetly at it, his pinky now touching mine.
He puts poetry up on his walls
Now with other pictures as well, the cheap prints from unknown artists at small studios or on the street, a couple photos with friends, sticky note doodles, some of them I give to him. He puts them in gaps between the pages, like notes in the margins. His fingers linger as he slowly pushes a picture of us through a thumb tack and into the dry wall, a smile he’s trying to hide on his face. I can see it and only grin, I will tease him for it later, but for now, I stay silent as he grabs another paper and puts another poem on his wall.
