vnn

I need space

I need air

I need the empty

fields round me;

and my legs

pounding along roads;

and sleep;

and animal existence."

It is in the small things we see it

The child's first step,

as awesome as an earthauake

The first time vou rode a bike,

wallowing up the sidewalk

The first spanking, when your heart

went on a journey all alone.

When thev called you crybaby

or poor or fatty or crazy

and made vou into an alien.

You drank their acid and concealed it.

Later.

If vou faced the death of bombs and bullets

You did not do it with a banner.

You did it with onlv a hat to cover vour heart.

You did not fondle the weakness inside you

though it was there.

Your courage was a small coal

that you kept swallowing.

If your buddy saved you

and died himself in so doing,

then his courage was not courage,

The bitterness disguised as sweetness reminds me of your taste. The taste of the smallest seconds we spend together, as just one.

Maybe the drunken eyes will take me back to the edge of the Seine and Dean Martin; making me fall apart in your arms.

Every sip takes me back to those moments. "We'll always have Paris," and is that enough?

I'm not sure, but the beauty of life is in the uncertain things (and in the wine bottles—now empty)