Cold and jittery, wearing a damp winter coat, well past
December on a snow drift afternoon north of New York City,
watching Q-tip cotton flakes fall, melting the instant they meet
pavement miles
apart though wide-paneled windows
as a woman laments in minor, her voice rises
and soothes the quiet worries of wrinkled brows,
frowning over clock faces as I listen to the drink
orders of a hundred strangers, well into my third
refill (that's 60 ounces of steaming bold-roasted coffee).
My heart is racing, and I'm still, twirling, it seems
the world is pirouetting out of control, like a father waiting
in a room with candy and roses because first born
cigars are reserved for the black and white spaces
of 50's sitcoms, "I Love Lucy's" lung cancer, twiddling my thumbs
my head's spinning from the rush of caffeine as my phone
blinks, and makes its final sounds,
as if I needed to be alerted to digital death-- it's no surprise,
I can't afford a meal, let alone, a replacement charger
Two week withdrawal has killed my immunity to
the synthetic surge.
I walked through the park, my hair was white as a
widow's and my lashes were wet, coated with a thin layer
of delicate powder. I wandered miles today because I have no place
to call home, an atomic shadow of a nuclear family, no job, no income,
a hundred dreams, a long-distance, perpetually absent father, who
left me, pinching my cheek as if, I was some rapscallion, some coach's
star athlete, injured and replete with nothing to offer, the last words
he ever spoke, "I'm done," and he wasn't kidding
I have yet to see a dime from the child support he owes me,
a decade overdue, and it's a good thing, I haven't approached Life
like a tunnel, waiting for the glorious light at the end-- I didn't hold my breath
by now, I would have been dead and purple. Instead of Love,
I'm strangled by expectations, choked by hopes as thick as jungle vines,
wrapping around my neck and my tired limbs, waiting for my veins to swell
and pop, surrounded by predators, ready to swallow me whole like
boa constrictors.
