Leases and Leaving
It is time, at long last, to
leave this partial home behind, like
a meal half eaten when the winds
of obligation needed you more
than the breadcrumbs-
it isn’t like the old stories though;
crumbs make awful trail markers.
It is time, for time has washed
away the scent of long stale nights,
crinckled wrappers of midnight
toil and water that once ran sultry
down this moonlight amalgam
of what is always taken for granted.
As I ride the lone elevator up
my final moments, as the vomit
stains on the carpet smiles in the shape
of a goodbye, I know that things will be
different. The missing ceiling tiles
are filled in with furious memory,
and with a certain fondness too.
This garden of earthly turmoils has taken
to greening as of late, but tainted
waters turn green, too. Knowing
this like is like the taming of
wine upon youth’s tongue
as bitterness replaces the frolic,
the ignorance, the bruised-elbow
adolescence we lease. I do not want
to trade grape juice for bitterness, or
taxes for tacos at three a.m.-but
I have little say in the matter.
I want to stay in the comforts
of dirty laundry, salty with memory,
teeming with sex and alcohol and
transcendence-but this is a
celestial comfort: raucous, alive
like lightning at a distance, but
like an omen star, is already dead.
As I clear my room, I realize
how betrayed I can feel by a place.
I tell myself “it is called growing up” only
to make myself believe I have won. But
that is like communion wine
and can only fool me for so long.
Familiar things are beginning to feel
borrowed again-but isn’t everything?
leave this partial home behind, like
a meal half eaten when the winds
of obligation needed you more
than the breadcrumbs-
it isn’t like the old stories though;
crumbs make awful trail markers.
It is time, for time has washed
away the scent of long stale nights,
crinckled wrappers of midnight
toil and water that once ran sultry
down this moonlight amalgam
of what is always taken for granted.
As I ride the lone elevator up
my final moments, as the vomit
stains on the carpet smiles in the shape
of a goodbye, I know that things will be
different. The missing ceiling tiles
are filled in with furious memory,
and with a certain fondness too.
This garden of earthly turmoils has taken
to greening as of late, but tainted
waters turn green, too. Knowing
this like is like the taming of
wine upon youth’s tongue
as bitterness replaces the frolic,
the ignorance, the bruised-elbow
adolescence we lease. I do not want
to trade grape juice for bitterness, or
taxes for tacos at three a.m.-but
I have little say in the matter.
I want to stay in the comforts
of dirty laundry, salty with memory,
teeming with sex and alcohol and
transcendence-but this is a
celestial comfort: raucous, alive
like lightning at a distance, but
like an omen star, is already dead.
As I clear my room, I realize
how betrayed I can feel by a place.
I tell myself “it is called growing up” only
to make myself believe I have won. But
that is like communion wine
and can only fool me for so long.
Familiar things are beginning to feel
borrowed again-but isn’t everything?