struck

Full brimming full.  Moved with the pulls of a thousand magnets, a thousand crests all beating to that same tide, graceful swings between delight and desire- sex and solitude.  The same streets, a year later- the same squalor sans the desperation.  Streets are directions, not deserts, and faces are curiosities, no longer lethal.  (Sometimes they even glow.)

Old men remain old men.  I'm afraid there is no cure.  They were once young, just as desperate but less pathetic.  To find, after all the experience, that the most you can hope for is pity.  Maybe a kind look or a lucky gust of wind.  But to find yourself in that state with the same mad desires of youth.  Burning without fodder.  (I accepted the gift, a necklace, out of confusion and naivete.  The idea that he had bought it with intention,  for me.  The idea.)

I saw her ex last night.  Thin.  Haunted.  Tortured like he was from the start. Balding Poe in a beanie.  I never liked him much at all, but in my middle school yearning for acceptance from people I don't even like, I tried to make good and to focus on his redeeming qualities.  Or fabricate them... it's hard to tell. When I talked to him, he couldn't hold a sentence together.  It was like talking to the aftermath of a man.  And when I wished him well and walked way, I couldn't believe how removed I felt.  A shrand from a laughable past.  Walking away from the pyre... not one ember plume spoiling the sky.  (His trove is what broke any desire or attempt at respect.  Misogynist to the core.  You go ahead and wear those heels, beautiful.  You go on.)

All in the state of waiting.  The next bell. The next check.  The next encounter.  The next tragedy.  The next lover.  The next quiet hour.  Fall is a soft sobbing wrestle with the hunger.  No one hears, but plenty know.  Don't make me say it.  The longing for chamber music.  A fire in my belly and every word aflame. (But it gets so dark so early.  I've said goodbye before I knew I was leaving.  I am a step ahead of you.  Of myself.  A glass of water before the hunger pangs. Anticipation rich.)