Shuttle Bus 17: A Poetry Collection

Imaginary Friend

Why is it that my teenage years seem to be slipping

Away like how the textured ink scatters in an

Etch-a-sketch when you were little and you

Purposefully shook the metal to one measly corner,

To watch as your drawing fizzled away as the ruins

Of a sandstorm would.

When all of my once close 'pals' drift away, like

Wreckage in a hurricane, the tide holding their hand,

Easing them into the water as a lie benign watching the

Laugh lines form on the trees from the oncoming

Friction.

One wants to be a designer, the other an engineer,

But yet I feel so tiny, so impactless, like a null vote,

In a stack of hole punched choices, as though I'm not

Making this decision for myself, but against myself,

Who will I meet once I unscrew this opportunistic

Frame of space, will they greet my company?

As I did with my imaginary half giraffe half griffin

Leo, whom my parents acclaimed was an ordinary

Phase shift in a growing mind.

I did not make Leo because I knew he was not there,

He was, and in my mind, we held parties, whilst

A mid-2000s pop ballad broils as does a home cooked meal

Makes its aura to your bedroom door, as a relative coming

Home would do for the holidays, sipping orange soda,

I hold my red solo cup in my palm, as he does with his tail,

Wrapped around it like a clenched fist, as bullies do,

When they kick dirt into your teeth, but he was a kindred

Spirit, one of compassion, of love, he was what I wanted to

Be myself, and how I wanted society to react to me.

As years went by, I neglected him, much like an aging toy,

The sewn eyes unbuckling, the stitching revealing an

Ooze of stuffing, the white polish being the intestinal

Lobes, possibly the lining of the lungs.

He waved goodbye, as a passenger would in a subway,

Moving in motion through a window, as if they are

Initially phantom, though they are distinct and solid,

The glass pane being a segregation between what

You thought you knew and what you know now.

I hold my hand to my chest, as though a part

Of my heart wishes to leap free.

Leo, his wings drifting, limbs of thrown

Shrubs, of tattered buildings, of attacked

Automobiles in the eye of the storm.

I am lost at sea, with sand in my eyes,

And dirt in my teeth, wishing to have

Leo to help voyage me away, but in this instance,

I hold my hand to my chest, for Leo to jump

Back into place, as a puzzle piece found from

Under the living room couch. I will make it through.

I am you.