Catch-up

by Joel

This piece was written during a workshop run by poet and friend of DCSC Nathan Blansett. Check his stuff out!

Another hot flash. Bring some water next time, Christssake. So many squinting faces. The magicians are dragging dead doves across Fifth and Courtland. Moms smother crying kids in their bosoms and I hide in your shadow, bobbing and weaving through street vendors. Want some mango? A goldfish? Tide Pods? No, maybe, no. We’re home now, or at least some place where, for sixteen months, we get to avoid thinking about the consequences of stabbing the walls. Eighteen. Shit, how long did we sign this lease for? Sixteen months from now I’ll be the same old hopeful delinquent I was last year, but eighteen months from now I could really be somebody. Five years to prepare, one month to make it happen, that’s what they say. I watch you count on your fingers, discovering just how overdue we are in real time. Your subsequent glare cuts like safety scissors, dull and innocent but damn they still work. So let’s just say I misremembered and it was ten. That’s enough to get you off your ass and making a pot of tea, humming along to my humming of some song you’d think is dreadful if you’d heard it. I’ll take what I can get. Fine, I’ll have some, but because it’s there, not because I wanted it.