The Poetry Marathon

We sit on opposite sides

Staring up at the celestial bodies

Waiting for shooting stars

We make silent wishes

And let our fingers drift

In warm eddies

They touch

Neither of us know anything about the patterns

Painting the sky above us

But we still watch

And marvel

I’ve always enjoyed

Playing at being something else

Different people

Different things

It’s easier

To steal other qualities

Than it is

To use my own

So naturally

How different is it

Under hot stage lights?

On a rainy night

I cracked the spine

Of the book that would change me

Shaping my mind and filling my thoughts

With prophecies and battles

And cats made of flame

The smell of those pages

Is one I have yet to encounter again

So the memory is clear and pristine

Bits and pieces of my life

Between those well-worn papers

Their names remain fresh on my tongue

No matter how long it’s been since I’ve heard their voices

Echoing in my head

I honor them in my own way

Years on

I used to think

I took nothing from you

And it wasn’t until recently

That I realized

There is so much that we share

Like a loud, wonderful laugh

And round, soft cheeks

And loopy, scrawling letters

And the unavoidable curse

To experience emotions

At a loud volume

You once told me I was the sun

But I may actually just be the moon

Reflecting back your glorious light

I remember it being huge

With a sloping roof

And enough space for ten people

Maybe more

Five feet off the ground

Twice if you climbed onto the roof

(An act of bravery seldom achieved)

The moss was slippery

So one must hang on branches

The walls were colored with chalk

And then with permanent marker

Names written

Jokes recorded

Pictures drawn

When we left

We wrote a letter

To take care of the treehouse

And visit it frequently

So it’s never alone

One day it will rot away

We all do, after a while

But with me

It was perfect and sturdy

Welcoming and warm

A bookend to my childhood

I live in a memory

Of brushing away the leaves

On the first day of sun

And sitting on the planks

And listening to the wind in the leaves

I used to think

That everyone would get nervous in a roomful of girls

That it was perfectly normal

To have your heart skip a beat

When a pretty girl smiles at you

You just want to be friends, right?

I was assuaged

By the “correct” feeling for boys

Skipping hearts

Blushing cheeks

Irony has always been best appreciated

In hindsight

There was a girl

A close friend

Who delicately removed my shirt

And painted on my bare back

And I guiltily imagined what it would be like to kiss her

I had dreams

Where my hands and lips

Betrayed my desires

But how much could a dream mean anyway?

And then I held her hand

And leaned into her laugh just a little too much

And followed her to her bedroom

Where she curled into my side

And tilted her beautiful smile up to me

And I finally fucking realized

A pitcher plant attracts its prey

With the smell of sweet nectar

And bright, beautiful colors

So the naive insect

Falls through a trapdoor

Into a pool of fluids

And there it is broken down

Your smile

Your laugh

Your honey-sweet words

All nectar calling to me

Ignoring the slippery pitfall

Until I was neck deep in your poison

The state of California

Is 1040 miles long

And most of that

Is nothing at all

Empty grassland

Grazing cattle

Sloping hills

Varying shades of yellow and brown

At eighty miles per hour

It is a blur

Several hours long

It is easy for a mind to wander

Lost in the endless waving grass

Grabbed only by the occasional landmark

Or a fellow lonely traveler

Courting death at 110 miles per hour

If you die in the in between,

Do you just keep driving forever?

If Dante saw the Interstate

Would he recognize Purgatory?

We called it the pirate house

With a spiral staircase

And a trap door

And a tree house in the yard

I loved it from the second I stepped inside

It was wonderful and strange

A hodgepodge from those who came before

We’d pretend the trees in the yard were a jungle

And that we were adventurers

Never touching the ground

I taught myself to slide down the bannister

Into a room that forever smelled like burning wood

Step out into a world bathed in snow

Or soaked in rain

Or covered in summer spiders

I grieved that house when we left

Like leaving behind an old friend

I hope whoever comes next

Loves the spiral staircase

And the trap door

And the tree house

Just as much as we did

How wonderful it is

To articulate a scene in your mind

Into a scene on the page

With pencil and keyboard

A different world is born

Filled with anything one can imagine

Humanity was built on stories

What a gift it is

To take part in that legacy