Today I watched a child smile 
small, easy, innocent. 

A face that has not yet learned 
what the world can take and give. 

No shadow of loss, 
not the unbearable grief 
of losing a world’s fair goldfish 
and finding the hard truths of heaven and hell. 

No weight of numbers, 
no whisper of bills or burdens 
passed between tired hands. 

Just sweetness
melting ice cream
and a reason enough to be happy.

He smiled
as if nothing could interrupt it,
as if the world
had not yet introduced itself.

Chase the deer, the red-stained pavement, 

Chase the Ford F-150, white and black and silver, tires screech, 

and suddenly the concrete is scattered with glass stars and 

the car is upside down or maybe the world is 

and you think maybe you can see the moon 

or headlights 

or maybe it’s just the looming shadows of the sleeping oaks 

or the tumble, tumble, tumble down the hill off that rural road 

and maybe that deer, dead, decomposing 

on the side of the lonely highway was picked apart by the vultures 

before it even died and 

maybe you are that deer now, totaled and lying in a ditch, 

hair crusted to your scalp and hair defying the pull of gravity 

[or maybe complying with it, You still don’t know if you are upside down]

and there are birds, circling, or maybe that is a cloud 

and you feel trapped, you are trapped

warped metal digging into your palms, into your scalp, 

into your warm, pale skin and in the moonlight you think about

how beautiful it is, the stark contrast 

of the scarlet against the white of the metal 

[the white of your skin]

 the contrast of your mangled body 

against the ink-dark night sky, and 

maybe this is fine, 

maybe this is where you will die, in a ditch on the side of route 50,

and maybe that's a good thing:

joining the deer you passed by at mile marker 75

and the possum that met the grille of your truck not long ago 

and you have been here for hours, dangling from that front seat, 

[you have been here for 5 minutes]

you have been here for your whole life and the car's engine died 

not long ago [strange, you didn’t notice it went quiet]

and your ears feel stuffed with cotton and your mouth is dry

and you realize that blood is dripping into your eyes

[you hadn’t realized how much you were bleeding]

and maybe you should try to move, try to reach for your phone 

and call for help, 

but the seat-belt is cutting sharply into your chest 

and the blood obscures your vision 

and the pull of the center of the earth 

[the pull of the fatigue calling for your muscles to release]

and thinking is getting harder and you stop trying to move now 

and something falls and suddenly the twisted body of the car 

is filled with static, 

then music and now you know it is the end, 

and you are okay with that, you had a good drive. 

The last sound that graces your ears before you become a 

dark empty pit:

Take me home, country roads

Take me home

It was love. It was love and you were sure of it, dreadful of the blooming cavity in your heart, filling and sinking like an inconsistent tide. It washed over you, dragging in fragmented images of her.

 You savored each memory, forcing your brain to recall every scent or taste she led you towards. When you closed your eyes, you could see her dark hair swishing behind her as she sprinted towards a sassafras tree. From it, she plucked a glove-shaped leaf. She shook out her hands, causing her reddish-brown leather jacket to fall down her forearms, and she started to grind the leaf with pinched fingers. She smiled up at you and smeared the severed green onto her palm. Smell, she said, hovering her hands below your nostrils. 

Like Root Beer, you smiled, instantly transported back to high school, A&W with friends in your parents’ basement. You wanted to hold her root beer hands, wanted her to tell you that she loved you. Only you. All of you. You wanted to spend nights with her in bed, instead of just picturing her face as you fell asleep. When you closed your eyes, there she was waiting, smiling patiently. Yet, you never got her nose right. It was merely a blip in your memory, fuzzy as soon as you focused on it. It must have been striking, defining in her side profile, right? Or maybe it was small and soft, to not distract from her eyes. That’s what kept you up at night. 

Nights were the worst. From your apartment, there was a feeble view of the moon. Feeble, yet existent, contrasting her old apartment. She rented it from a widowed woman, and lived in the basement. The only windows were located at the very tops of the walls, long and rectangular, providing a distorted street-side view. She had a solitary outlook of the moon from her bed, and said goodnight to it each night. Her moon was always full, mostly because it was not the moon, but a streetlamp, fixed in the night sky. 

You liked the idea of a streetlamp moon, you liked the idea of If I Didn’t Know Better… a classic ignorance-is-bliss situation. You were fond of the escape, the relief of being an unemployed, unmarried, uninspired novelist. She told you that she liked the escape, escape was okay, she said. In fact, she claimed, she refuses to watch the movie if she read the book- a naive strategy to preserve her original ideas of characters.  

She made an exception for Harry Potter. One can’t just imagine all that magic. 

You disagreed. Not all magic can be seen, you said, that’s why you write. The reader must be able to picture everything inside their head; a teenage boy ridden with acne, a wet pant leg from kneeling in the dew, a redhead woman shaking her head No. 

No, love can’t be seen. One must picture it, you sighed. 

She reached out her hand in consolation, her slender fingers almost touching the hair on your arms, leaving you in goosebumps. You closed your eyes, desperately trying to feel her touch, then opened them, disgusted. Shutting the reddish-brown leather-bound notebook, you set down your pen. You were another Pygmalion, enamored by his own creation. Looking around at your barren apartment, at the fountain pen sketches of her. Dark, long hair, and big brown eyes. A different nose each time. Freckles. Clear skin. 

You held your tiny notebook close, cupping its spine with your fingers, its body supported by your forearm. The leather cover rested on a vein, listening in to your blood pumping, a weak attempt at a transfusion. You were called a hopeless romantic growing up, teased by your sister and mother. But not the flowers at your door, Say Anything kind of hopeless romantic, but the hopeful kind. Hopeful that maybe one day you would walk down the street and see your ink-woven figure in a coffee shop, sipping tea with her slender, sassafras-scented hands. 

Today I

ran through the rain, hair

newly cut and weightless even though

it was drenched; I

ate strawberries dusted with sugar while

doing homework, pencil

tracing neat letters across math homework I

hadn't realized I remembered

how to do but

found the numbers quietly running

back into my arms; I

wore a plaid skirt and polo even though

the short strands of my hair constantly

getting caught in my eyes and across my nose

didn't seem to fit; I

realize now as I run my fingers through it that

I always liked the haircut, just

was terrified of what other people

would think; birds

are weightless and free, and

people still find them beautiful;

I also realized today that

the United States spells out

us.

Today I 

carried the world on my shoulders but

still felt weightless, as

carrying the world with me were the shoulders

of a million poets.

When I met a girl on Omegle who read me like three incoherent, handwritten, multi-page love poems

I think that's what it means to feel something

When the lady who sleeps on the bench outside smiles because only she fully appreciates a sunny day

I’m pretty sure that's what feeling is

When the old man who is weak from fasting cries as he reads the last passage on Yom Kippur, then dances in front of the congregation in the presence of God

He is feeling

The little boy in the room next to mine, who weeps and thrashes and screams at the change

He is feeling

There's a playlist I made a year ago called “Big Feelings” 

If I ever have a reason to listen to it, maybe then I will be feeling

I hear the river running, 

flowing with not a care in the world.

I see the leaves falling to the ground,

a thick carpet on the forest floor.

I feel a light breeze on my skin,

cool and crisp and fresh.

I smell the trees of pine, 

ever as vibrant as the summer before.

I taste the wild berries,

delicious as they are untouched, natural.

The forest is a safe space, a place for healing.

Surrender yourself to it, 

let it heal you,

let it enter your veins and make you feel the euphoria, 

the calmness, 

the quiet. 

Step into the forest,

and just, 

be.

I love post-script, thought Benvolio as he sat curled in his favorite armchair.  His favorite music was humming through his airpods into his ears, and as he watched raindrops gather and drip down the windowpane, he felt that he could nearly silence the world through the steady stream of verses twirling with his thoughts.  

Perhaps, he thought, rainy days are meant to teach us what beauty and what hope can be found in our minds and in each other.  Spring carries so many rainy days upon her freckled shoulders, and yet she never seems to fall from the weight; rather, it’s almost like she grows from it.  She brings about dozens of days fluttering with flower petals and the scent of magnolias.  She dances and dances, and she leaps so high she kisses the sky.  

Benvolio, unsure of where his thoughts were flitting their wings off to, stood up to retrieve a notebook from his desk.  It was nearly empty, as he didn’t write often, but he was feeling rather poetic today; it was as if spring were whispering into his ear the melodies that were mixing with his playlist.  When he returned to his spot with a pen in his hand, he began with an address to Rory; he always felt his ideas were best captured in letters.

But he didn’t get past that first name dotted at the end with a comma.  His eyes had strayed to a little sprout of green poking from the soil filling in with rainwater.  There was the tiniest hint of pink clinging to the end of the wisp of green: a bud.

The first of spring’s freckles, just beginning to glow on her cheeks.

Benvolio smiled at that, and thought about the freckles that were scattered across Rory’s nose.

P.S, he began, just under where he had addressed his letter.

I love post-script.

Every day when I walk home from school
I see a woman with her young son
Asking for money by the road.

I stick my hands in my pocket and
Turn my head away.
There is nothing I can do because
I only have three dollars on me.

The Houston heat is relentless
And I am tired.
I open Instagram on my phone as I pass the 
Convenience store
So I can distract myself.

It looks like my country's crazy president
Has done something crazy (again).

Shocker.

I like the post, and concede that
There is nothing I can really do other than a like
Because I am only fourteen.
This is enough. 
(I add a repost on top of the like for my conscience.)

I head to my best friend's house.
Did you know we're in a water crisis right now?
I didn't.
I like that reel, too.

Nothing more I can do.

I walk into her bedroom.
She complains about the state of the world.
Bombs, Iran, Israel
Oil.

We argue, we laugh, we play games
And before we can scroll away from the truth
Her eyes turn to mine, eyes wide.
Real people, she says.
They're dying. What do we do?

I shrug. For now, I believe what I am told.
Test on Tuesday.

Tomorrow will go just about the same way.
I'll walk past that woman on the side of the road
And tell myself there's nothing I can do.

We'll
Seduce ourselves with the sweet lies we're told
Learn how to prioritize the wealth of the one percent
Soothe ourselves with the faint warmth
Of the people not on television
Burning in our kitchen.