ONE
i remember when it was less beautiful
and made more sense
i remember when it was more beautiful
and made less sense
i remember when my brain moved slower
when time was my telescope
when distance took naps
i remember my broken CD player
my broken boombox
my broken box
before there was beating sun, there were beaches
light stole shapes stole sheets stole shore
before there was hot sand and cold sand
there were sunsets, mostly the same
TWO
my cooling coffee
in my cooling coffee shop
inaugural adjustments
on the fire escape
talking full voice
sorry, can’t hear you
walking bass line
sorry, can’t catch you
mixed messages
crass jokes
i got brought back
i was brought back
i kept expecting someone i knew
to walk through the door
ok i was waiting for him
to walk through the door
placated simplicity
asked who really was the smartest
all the creatives
started asking for their money
all the money
started asking for it’s mom
all the banks collapsed
all the debt dissolved
all the everything
got madder and madder
flaccid chord structure
and terrible lyrics
washed me over and over
choices as mosquito bites
open windows in the rain
exaggerated flamboyancy
distrusted recognition
power punched combinations
i googled every sentence
i googled every word
variance became my edge
flippancy became my-
never mind I’d always been flippant
health at cost for a cultural embrace
as both an involved and an anti
mirror into mirror into mirror
rather replicated and okay with it
canned, convoluted, oversaturated, overdrawn
an anticlimactic break
in an old fashioned fashion
i felt i was being too quiet
so i got myself interrupted
i felt i was taking it too seriously
it was fiction, after all
but none the less
i still get nervous eating pomegranate seeds
and i’m constantly leaving dean to the road
i always check if he’s a montague
and i swear i didn’t kill the albatross
i’ve seen the same bearded face
over and over
i’ve heard the same bushwick hipster joke
a thousand times
and still, i minded neither
and spent all the money i made
THREE
i get so sad at the ends of pages
and far less sad at the ends of roads
i remember a trail much longer than i should
i remember their names much more often than i should
it’s not the rules i’ve forgotten
it’s the record
i’ve never been the girl with the umbrella
i’m the girl with the backpack
qualitated vocabulary
a restless comedian
authenticated wisdom
trying to remember
which meant greater than
which meant less than
flavored distaste
inarticulate past tense
i shortened the wire
i shortened the rope
i sorted through profile picture after profile picture
the cover version just wasn’t the version i wanted
bricks were laid by that bricklayer there
but i didn’t want to believe
layers were made
of jazz and consonants
of peace and nicotine
of passwords and naivete
of gin and color
of blood and guts
freezing and unfreezing
frozen and unfrozen
i piled recollections
like the woodstacks of my youngest youth