Strolling Lightly In Concrete Gardens

My jagged, bitter lollipop. Cuts my mouth as I suck down hard.

I get lonely. Start to want things I can't have. Turns my stomach to pudding. My head into a broken zipper. It goes down, but won't go up again. Not without a fight. And losing a lot of skin.

The only words I ever hear bleed from split lips. Cracked and unable to heal. And even if they could. Who would speak to me them?

The words that came first now only come after.

Luck. There's no rabbit's foot without something dying.

There's no way of knowing anything or anyone. Only in the ways we know ourselves. Fractured photographs spilling into the frames we've hung for them. A gallery of expectations lit by the haunting ambiance of the heart.

Those hallways never end. The farther I walk the longer they stretch.

They slip gently like socks over our toes and then off again just as easily. Feet can't tell the difference. That pair or the next. Just walk on each other until we're dirty. Then discard them.

There's no simple way to alter the inside like we do appearance. A trim here. A tuck there. Change is so simple on the surface. That must be why it's such an appealing resolution.

But it always comes back. Whatever ugliness we've trimmed from the flesh. Below the roots are still alive.