You're Trailing Yourself

The sputtering blink of the street lamp

Makes you taller, then shrinks you, then splits you in half

So you're trailing yourself on your walk to the pay phone

Your pockets weighted down with quarters and the hope that no one's home

You spray paint cinnamon on vines and key the cars you pass by

Your ears burn and your voice don't sound right

So you spend the next week playing weakened

Rolling three men alone in the dark of your kitchen

Your apartment can't talk so it's safe for your secrets

All the stories you've invested with a masochist, menacing meaning

Those tired tricks that you play to graph the life to your name

And you know it's not yours but for now it's okay

You wake and cut your initials in cheap glass

To mark a space for yourself when your time here has passed

When you're drifted and done, trading danger for distance

All those rocks that rope your neck are finally nameless and weightless and faceless

And you strip the sting from the stains that bleed the life from your face

Your cheeks will burn red on a pure perfect day