kings

One qualified equation and still it’s easy to see the emptiness. Whatever happened to the young dreams, the promises of a road. Somewhere to go. Those days are deader than an absorbed twin. Fire girl burning me. All those memories.

I am searching the applications for a sign. Dragging my feet, dragging this on. nothing can change the deepest feelings. Nothing can replace the ocean’s salt as it clings to my tired bones. Floating away from the safest places of personal review. Reflection is always a bit of a rough cut diamond. So much value and seemingly less rare than imagined. Screaming into myself. Talking myself into it. Bringing all that sea foam with me. Sinister the seaweed pulling me under.

It wasn’t such a distant time. My dreams rounding out, what is underneath the surface of my being. That child and the rejection still felt. I hurt for that, still. Day and night, reminders, it’s over.

Endless hallways, no way out. Doubt is still being built. A valley to roll out, stretch out, move to and around. All the synonyms for a stick, stuck like firing pins rusted to my inner thigh. Still within the doubt, the hands do the work, all this blood in the sand. We do what we do, dreams aside, the simple haunting of a love lost, a promise broken. We do what we can, here in the open waters, kings on jet skis, stalled in memory.

art credit: Modupeola Fadugba (Nigerian, b. 1985), Black Water Pillars, 2020. Acrylic, ink and graphite on burned canvas, 48 x 36.25 in.