a little longer

Neither of us has work to do
So we busy ourselves
With construction paper and
The moving images of fantastically beautiful and imaginary people
Passing bright daylight hours in cave like rooms

Sometimes I scream
I was supposed to be a dancer
And you reminisce about your promise as a high school writer
Later I tell you that
I think you could be a writer if you wanted to be
And you tell me I have a dancer’s grace
We both dismiss the compliments but on the inside
Even if I don’t think you don’t know what it means
I appreciate the thought

Sometimes we walk
Or drive
This is LA
To this coffee shop down the street
Where impossibly skinny girls with bangs and boys on macbooks sit and spend time together alone.
We like to marvel at how being hip oddly does not necessitate being pretty
How it seems to be an active choice to be unpretty
And at the continuous choices people make to appear less appealing than they probably are
As if their clothes and hair and hats and glasses
Were an open dare to try and see the beauty behind
What fashion made them do.
And then we try and not be like our mothers
And appreciate everyone for their uniqueness.

There are cities I never want to visit
I list them sometimes
Saying their ugly names in romantic ways
You like to tell me that
Maybe life could be waiting there
Maybe love and art are floating in the air
And when I arrive things will happen
I snap back that this city is my city
That it makes miracles
Not like Tulsa or Savannah
Although I have heard that Savannah is a really cool town

You relate my needs to issues stemming from my childhood
Even though you are right
Because I explained it to you
It makes me feel a little more understood than I ever thought I would be
I want those to be my issues and keep them to myself
But the only way to be close is for you to know them too
Damn it.

You cried one time about how much you missed
Airplanes and passports and waking up early and long train rides and tea in different countries and then you went on
And cried about
Friends who don’t return calls, being ignored and unemployed and your fear of never measuring up
To, let me remind you
Standards you established in grade school
Before you knew how hard life was going to be
I laughed because you impress me more than anyone else
and let you keep crying about your imagined chubbiness and the mistakes you think you made last year when you slammed your head when you fell in love, helped pack the dynamite to blow it up and felt the sting of some real and more imagined I told you so’s when it was over.
Crying can be good.
Sometimes I cry too
Usually late at night and alone about how awful people have been to one another in the name of power, god, sex, fear, science and pride.
I cry about colonialism, violence and the beautiful, strong and open way people find to love one another
And over the history of the modern world
How some stories and some people touch my soul
And about god.
But I’ve seen you cry about god too
I think everyone does
Even if they don’t know that that is quite what it is
Perhaps it is better to say
Crying about love
Because love, more understandably, can be a heavy thing.
Especially love of self.