i miss the days i didn’t yet fear the rain
and we collected rust on playground swings like harvesters.
the adolescent springs were clammy, afternoons elongated like
toffee on a sweltering day, and you were too cool for me. i hate comparisons
and metaphors and things of those sorts, hate how grown means shielding my face from the spring shower,
smoothing my locks in mute panic upon the kiss of chicago winds instead of
running towards it, kissing it, inhaling and allowing it’s notes to cut me open like an
epiphany. i woke up in cold sweat last night and it was thundering,
violet and ivory hints of lightening encapsulating the city and i thought of
how that reminded me of you, a furious, fast moving spring storm of its own,
static making my split ends dance in a way i didn’t like.
my heart is fragile but buckled, and fear meant i’m bitter but bite me,
yet against your molars i roll away like a slippery pear wet
from the way it was polished.
isn’t there a way to love where I don’t have to shed my raincoat?
dryness is temporary, so is the joy that comes from
having no agenda; either you are pre-adolescent or you
have completely lost it. growing up means rounding up your edges and bracing
against the impact of a weather report, or to fit yourself like a puddle
against an appropriate-sized, asphalt crevice
the one like many others
up the magnificent mile