There was a boy who masked his storms with smiles
and promises to do better.
I've wondered what he thought about late at night
with only wild emptiness to keep him company.
Skeletal with a burning heart,
the misfit bled his words onto the pavement.
He dragged his feet,
leaving ash and wasted potential in his wake.
But he laughed
like a drumbeat against an empty oil barrel.
A tune easy to dance to even though
he was too combustible to be trusted.
Empty heart,
he allowed the poison to leech in
till he tasted of nothing, but arsenic and bedlam.
Mayhem maniac,
he reeled rusted among the stars in his mind.
He was a danger to himself.
He was a fuse already lit,
and no one willing to smother
his coming tragedy.
Pockets filled with bottle tops,
empty lighters and imagined slights.
No room in his little boy eyes
to see beyond the present
and imagine a softer future
of his own making.
