But for all these things, let me say that
I did.
I wanted to be someone.

That goes on for a while. As well as
the parts you saw. And my heart
has borne me places strange but also trite,
like this cafe where I sit and write
my silly words. But at least without
waiting for some pretty girl to fall in love
with my fraught hands or how visibly
I struggle within myself.

Too late for that.
Now, if she looks at me, I won’t see her,
instead I’ll be staring off
into some separate space,
screwing up my eyes to see
what my mind squirms to keep concealed
like the hustling cups of a street magician,
flying apart and slipping under, and–

–there he is,
boy-skinny, mop-haired
sitting on the top branch of
the magnolia tree, and Christ
it feels so good to be high,
to be up high up here. Wishing
he could stay.

But his life won’t wait for him,
there are dishes and homework,
and all the sadness that is coming.
Hurry down now, you’re going to be late
for alcoholism and
the various hospitalizations and
the night the cops will come.

If he stays too much longer, he might not
make it to the rooms where he’ll learn
to finish quitting, and about the long living
that comes after that, the strained peace with
the body, the slow realizing that he is
one of the people on this earth that lives and does
the living things. But still thinking
of that wrecked train
he saw there like a body, lying
in the fractured earth and
his jealousy.

But now his mother’s calling.
They’ve discovered him
not being there again.
He lets her call, get angry, go inside.

He’ll come down soon enough.
He’ll wipe the counters.
He’ll clean the dishes.
He’ll catch up to me in this cafe.
What else is he going to do?

And when he gets here, I’ll tell him
I don’t know if there is enough
of me left to last another year,
and he’ll ask:
But do you want to try?