I'll be kind and I'll be sweet if you stop staring straight through me.
The Midway
I feel as though I’ve learned something
I did not want to know,
as if the rolls of fat falling over
wheeled chairs could spill onto the sidewalk
like melted ice cream, attracting ants.
This wasn’t what I bargained for.
I heard him cuss loudly and casually, in public.
His words rose like a plume of smoke which
stained the air, and we
were soured for walking too close.
It lingered. I didn’t think the world still spoke like that.
I am an outsider here.
I want my people, my haunts, my feelings
to be within an arm’s reach, a day’s drive.
I want this to be my space and it isn’t,
because everyone looks tired.
The difference is difficult to place,
like recognizing yourself a dream because
everyone has the same eyes.
Everything here is cheap and copious.
It’s all too much, and too loud, and
I feel smug and guilty for faulting others
for wanting what I want, with smaller price tags,
for small moments of distraction
adding up
to piles of plastic.
This knowledge feels like an admission of guilt.
Like I’ve stepped in my own chewing gum,
saccharin and tepid.
This knowledge feels like building a fence with no gate, finding condoms and snakeskin in the tall grass
dissolving into the earth as though
it hadn’t existed
and didn’t matter.
It feels like the clatter and stink of remorse, lit up
by bright lights and a suggestion:
Maybe it won’t stick.
I feel as though I’ve learned something
I did not want to know,
as if the rolls of fat falling over
wheeled chairs could spill onto the sidewalk
like melted ice cream, attracting ants.
This wasn’t what I bargained for.
I heard him cuss loudly and casually, in public.
His words rose like a plume of smoke which
stained the air, and we
were soured for walking too close.
It lingered. I didn’t think the world still spoke like that.
I am an outsider here.
I want my people, my haunts, my feelings
to be within an arm’s reach, a day’s drive.
I want this to be my space and it isn’t,
because everyone looks tired.
The difference is difficult to place,
like recognizing yourself a dream because
everyone has the same eyes.
Everything here is cheap and copious.
It’s all too much, and too loud, and
I feel smug and guilty for faulting others
for wanting what I want, with smaller price tags,
for small moments of distraction
adding up
to piles of plastic.
This knowledge feels like an admission of guilt.
Like I’ve stepped in my own chewing gum,
saccharin and tepid.
This knowledge feels like building a fence with no gate, finding condoms and snakeskin in the tall grass
dissolving into the earth as though
it hadn’t existed
and didn’t matter.
It feels like the clatter and stink of remorse, lit up
by bright lights and a suggestion:
Maybe it won’t stick.