"I wait to be back on your mind"

I walk deep toward the bay.
Tilted back like a roofer
so the hill won't get the better of me and my backpack,
brimful with obligations.
A desperate twig begging escape
beckons from the storm drain.
When I reach the bridge
I always feel the crooked urge to leap from it's smoothness,
not from a hunger for endings
but for all the lovely skin stories I can never know,
cool air rushing past face and sandaled feet
the water that would echo out in choppy circles of shock.
I'm over the bridge now and past the supermarket,
the sidewalk speaks to my eyes in a chalky voice;
dirty love pressed into cement-mixer discharge
night cools it into a hard reality:
"I wait to be back on your mind"
wanted to call out, but I didn't.
wanted to be there, but couldn't.
I spent every stride undoing the knots on my hands,
my fingers became the nooses I used to drag myself homeward.


Didn't mean for it to be so morbid. It was a fine walk in fact...