By Aleksey Calvin
I met you on the corner by
The booze store
In the red brick house
Your old place used to be
You smiled like shattered glass
I couldn't tell if you looked older
But then again I didn't even know if it was me
On the Thanksgiving Day
The sky is grey and the streets are silent
I lit a clove
First in years and
We walked on down to the creek
You said you didn't seem to belong anywhere
I joked about your hair
Electricity in the air between us
And it hurts
I shivered
Like I was laying on the hillside before dawn
You didn't notice, lamenting details I'll forget
While I recalled the wine bottles once
We smashed
And offered you a menthol cigarette
There was talk
Of the few friends who died
And what our fates may be
Loose Dead Ends and
Kids setting fire in the streets
A little deer crept on by the trash-bin
When the dusk cries colors on the leaves
Which the darkness eats
And the chill silence of the streets
Suddenly
No longer welcomes us
I didn't want to ask what now
We all knew, always knew
What the answer was
When we hid behind the blind walls and broken machines
Drinking desperate
For that
Something
No one will recognize
And yet what we had, those little festivals of hope
Campfires in the lonely forests of cities
Were Never stepping stones, but ends.
("Might a whole life sometimes become just a radioactive aftermath of a compromise?"
A wiser person would look back and say.)
"I have to say, I can no longer remember the best parts of our hours…
Or I don’t want to…
They are too pained to remember Now
So, even then, maybe we cursed ourselves to forget them.
"And What is that closeness anyway? Why?"
I ask you and, before you can answer, wake up.
And as I wake up from this dream…
I know that it too I will have to forget
But I sneakily scribble it down
Because I may become hopeless,
But never cynical.
- 2013