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The Impression


by Darryl Price


It's been a long story, people 
stare. It's been a strange and sad tale, 
people laugh. It's all just as good 
as the first time, until people 
hide their grief inside seasons with 
curtains drawn. The dreams come back on 
line, people change and some go with 
the fading summer. They don't care. 

But because I love you, can you 
please agree you felt it? Because 
I must give the impression I 
am living someone else's life. 
A stranger animal in my 
own aching head. Tell the truth, I 
followed you. It's well understood 
how I loved you the most. Letters 

didn't lie, but people bullshit 
their way through the day to day hurt. 
Collecting little secrets, they 
walk out the door. But because in 
my mind, we're still friends who deserve 
to be kissed like wildfire and missed 
like home, I guess I'll be seeing 
you around. Kisses are like an 

intense kind of listening to 
it rain. Because I love holding 
your hand, do you even know it? 
The beat goes on, people think and 
forget the precious poems that 
somehow made them feel alive in 
the distant world's expanding cold 
breaths. In the first place. Again tears 

fall, people shrug it off. Some fall 
higher, some step deeper, people 
tunnel out in space, looking for 
a satisfactory ending. 
Did you know there isn't a film 
you can't leave behind? We're getting 
older. Just because you've come back 

from the edge of hating all things, 
it doesn't mean you are free to 
deny you have wings to fly. Rain
falls down. Temperatures drop. It's
Thursday. It will be Friday. Tell
me one more time how you don't care.
Becoming a poet is a 
silly thing to do with your life.   
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