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Counting to One Hundred


by Darryl Price


What is it you think really matters? To be in love or to be the love? You're dark matter on the bottom of their brown shoe, unless you're not, your white sock peeking out of a rough wide hole most likely. I've decided to just accept me. The way it's supposed to be is poison bullshit. If by their fruit you will know them, I still don't accept the offer. I suppose that makes me the alien in the foolish woods until someone gets to know me. Will we ever come together? I came to be here the same way we all did. Everything they say makes me not want to know them and their stone cold ways. They attack everything decent in the name of decency. They hate everything different in the name of money. They fear any color that doesn't come in a printed cardboard box. The price tag is just too high. But one thing is

certain, we all long for a stubborn way home. Someone to take the journey with. A dance worth a sigh. Why does it have to be called the opposite of warm and tender conversation? They want you to forget to show how you feel. Get lost in golden threads on bed sheets. Go back to troubled sleep. Don't linger now. Break another wing on another forgotten dream. But the poets managed to slip a note about impossible timing or two under your pilot's soft pillow's edge. Do you still think you're sailing on a small moon or are you someone else driving things in there? Stuff just pops into my head. It's a blessing and a curse. It's a blessed curse. It's a cursed blessing. But here we are. It always comes down to being here now. Setting things on fire with love letters. Putting out an out of control fire with however

much kindness we could muster out of thin air. That's not what they taught you in high school, but so what?  It's the truth. I'm holding onto you. I'm dancing in the rain, if I want to be myself. Stars in our tragic eyes. Sunset in our sad broken mirrors. If I could fix anything, I would fix the broken people's hearts first. But it's hard to forgive some of the words you said out loud in the universe to my face. But here we are still in fading book form. We might as well shake hands and don't look back in tears and don't look for answers gone away. Okay so some very nice poets gave me some of their best funny wisdoms, but I couldn't use any of it. Turns out, it only works once upon a time and only then out of pity. Flowers grow. A part of me is waiting there. We remain here. Heavy rain hits its target. Remember me.  
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