I’m running
past the old school
so there’s Mark?
Joey’s friend
on the elementary
playground
I’m running past,
maybe eleven, drawing
from a cigarette
he found. Joey’s watching him
and I’m
standing away plotting
how to save his life.
I act,
I won’t just stand by.
I bury the butt in tire chips.
my fingertips stink
like hot rubber.
I shake the memory
but not the smell.
and as I pass her house
I’m still in love with Staci Williams.
I still kiss the stream she drank.
I can still run by her house one night
I even crept into her
backyard but the windows were closed,
shades closed there was a black forest behind
me like a poem.
something about coming home, bicycles.
I thought these people neighbors,
they couldn’t
look stranger.
running through
beauty or close-by you want
to be honest for the sake of a butt
you remember when you keep forgetting the world,
17:01.3 or something; the exact
time it took
to run down the hill and come
back the same.
if you sat and watched you’d
only
ever see me running downhill.
