Have you been to East Lansing
Awkward,
Yet determined to lounge in the room and not be the most awkward.
At least there was always one kid with lopsided hair who saved
everyone, a typical Jesus usually named Mike.
We were all experts in porn. All with girlfriends out buying beer
and red label vodka for themselves.
Just beginning to get nasty. Half knowing that love is only what
you’re able to hold on to.
The rest of the half still pretending not to be virgins. Pretending
to know conversations.
As if the one girl they’d found their way into and pumped
three times counted.
We didn’t have to talk about that. But Mike usually brought
it up to dig his way from the basement.
Through the crevasse he’d fallen, unable to climb out, rappelling
farther and farther in search of light. One day he’d be gone
and we’d notice and talk about it between the 3rd and 4th
beer.
Leaving it after that initial, awkward, letdown.
Things will never end right.
I’m sure many people have said that.
5 words all common. In some arrangement it’s had to have happened
solely by probability. Given all that’s spoken and thought.
I don’t know about death. I can’t think about it with
meaning. Friends have seriously toyed with drugs looking for a sliver
of that light.
Love, the longer lived, only becomes painful.
With identities turned fragile as a crustacean desiccating on a
beach.
Tossed indifferently upon the beach.
Endurance to love wears and the beauty fades. Yet it’s the
only thing made un-awkward. The only thing comfortable in any true
meaning.
Our room we share. It’ll end, then begin again in another
breath. That’s one way to think. Nietzsche with a paragraph
led me around my college campus with a quirky smile because I thought
he was right.
Just patterns moving about with capacity to think.
Bound to repeat the exact same thing and everything else.
Merely because of the word infinite.
In the room.
I love her.
I’ve loved her and so has he.
My best friend.
He once asked me if it was alright, in the parking lot of a mid
sized city in Michigan. Looked at me after we rafted a West Virginia
river in the rain. Dude man, he said and then popped the question.
A hand on my shoulder as he looked up and into my eyes. Leaving
his question than saying, dude man, again.
Just say something, if you mind. Dude. Man.
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