17:01.3

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.