THE NOSTALGIA GENERATION [wattys 2018]

LOVE IS NOT DEAD

the sun burns bright and hot,

a pale ring of fire in the mist,

like the ring surrounding the cherry 

tint of a lit cigarette. 

either way, it's beautiful but nobody realizes,

too busy in their irrelevant lives,

but you smile at the sky and

i'm glad you share what i'm thinking:

Christ, that's beautiful.

you still ride your bike,

that rusty, creaky old thing with paint

flaking off and it's gears barely working.

but like you say old habits die hard.

you still play catch-the-ball with your sister,

even though there's a sleek and silver iPad

you could occupy her with.

it's nice to know you like to

work with the small moments

of just human to human.

I see you around quite a lot.

a glimpse, two or three,

sometimes a stare, a linger,

longer than the average look. 

it's sort of hard not to notice, you,

you beautiful violent mess of chaos-

you use the locker three steps away from me,

and our first conversation

could've been over Facebook,

and you scratch the side of your head,

eyes wide and brown dripping innocence and loveliness,

and you pluck that shred of courage, a rarity in teens like us today,

and ask an ordinary, mundane question, like what the chem homework is,

but still, the notion is extremely appreciated. 

you invite me to go to a party with you.

angela's birthday, i think, and she just turned seventeen

everybody is snapchatting, holding their phones up, flash on 

and it blinds you, videoing their crazy antics,

but you sit by me, instead of having your phone out,

you hold my hand and we talk for an eternity, it seems.

i read you and breathe you in like a book i can't put down;

you use lots of hand gestures when you explain,

It's cute, really, and it reminds me of an overgrown bat flapping

you drink progressively through the night in sips and soft gulps,

you tend to shift your weight from foot to foot,

and your eyes dance when you laugh and make a joke,

little things i'll never notice if it isn't for

moments like this.

does it drive you crazy how much a

person can suddenly mean to you?

how they were first background noise,

there but unimportant, existing but not to you,

and then suddenly, like a supernova, an explosion of a geyser,

they magnify and they dominate everything about you,

and become the only person that matters,

that even when the bodies go still,

and the sun is no longer beautiful,

and nobody cares,

obsessed in their webs,

we're still here.

even

when

we're

not. 

-

i did some revisions and i've been watching way too many savannah brown. 

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