Dragging Chains

The clock stuck ten hours into some Sunday this very instant.
I’m hiding out in a corner at SPoT – haunting it.
Brooding in it.
Gettin’ all angsty.

Running closer to 26 now,
I can’t shake the thought that my best years
are now well behind me
and the time I had to make those best years
the best years they’re supposed to be
were drained and robbed
by a certain southern state
and I will forever hold this –
among a great many other things –
against that state.


But at least now,
for now,
I can stare out the window
and in place of that terrible swamp
there now stand roads
and parks
and mailboxes.
Flags.
Shops.
People.
Buildings like fingers climbing forth from the earth to conquer the sky
like so many of us lost and wandering
who, to the quiet distain of any that it discomforts to believe,
actually own the world.

I dwell on the “great woman” stories,
driven by how mine has already come and gone
and been gone for longer than not
and how I know I will never be capable of
separating myself from her.
While I understand that she is long past,
never to return,
just like those best years
(and while it pains me, I accept that – though not quietly)
It fears me to let go of the feeling I had
when we once loved.
Its heavy weight filled from knowing she no longer does
and that if I do not,
It will be gone.
And lost.
And forgotten.
which feels like so much a crime
to destroy the most beautiful thing
I will ever have been a part of.

Someday,
someday I will conquer like those fingers
instead of being conquered by the memory
of her fingers’ light grip on mine.

But that day
is not now
and so I wander
and take solace in the knowledge that
we actually own the world.

I’ll take what good I can find
for now,
but
still forever
someday…