fallen out of jeans and against the wall
exhale rusty iron lungful of breath
place a bet on which is best
against yourself
zest and smoke and other pucker-ups
remained in the kitchen with no love
so that here, on
toy horse racetrack bedroom floorboards
to support your ceiling gaze
it seems possible
to be woken up
when it’s over
to think of this as past
to be stirred awake gently and wholly
and have left this behind
you could almost love yourself
but already woken, you don’t.
This poem was first published in Let’s Heat our Minds with Open Books: Selections from the Daniil Pashkoff Prize 2012. Writers Ink. e.V., Braunschweig. ISBN 978-3-9813742-1-6
Featured image licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).
