Country Song on the Radio About How He Left Her Again
He got painted onto her walls a solid brush of black and white –
no heart on his sleeve – a snicker just resting on the brim of his hat.
Everything fell over tumbled into broken jeans –
jumbled ‘hang-on-tight-to-the-sides’ pick-up trucks/ rolling soda cans side by side at his feet.
She whistled out pie filler, bad B side songs,
caught her phrases in the palm of her hand –
unripe baby birds she’d set them free and watch them rise up,
mourning them almost – the freedom she let.
She’d earn his stories on the second date -breezy hair, brown eyes
poking at his sides – “more” she’d say in the folds of his arms, “more”.
He powdered his sentences on the wrong side down -spaced between some lie
then smashed up against itself -caught up inside how lonely bad love can feel.
Kicked like a can- only looking back when she’s tired like a lazy eye –
days into night so fast the starless moonless specs of time
change into full-on nothing she remembers inside old tires worn thin/dusty.
She kissed him once under the thin -open blanket of the night,
wrapped herself around him like a question mark.
An umbrella poking its way through the rain.
i got plenty of nothing
i have this half-filled jar with air
just air so sound and secure floating its way free
so it seems….. it does….
it seems to share itself with easy.
i open it so slight so careful…
afraid maybe that passing curtain winds will blow it off its perch in the sky –
off the mountain of good it claims to itself.
wings maybe i think –
a winged bird can open this jar.
the rocks fill the space between the rocks
it can flutter its wings all brown and grey
flutters across your vision
black
when it passes.
i have this jar all filled with air
filled with tight hard ‘once i thought so’ air.
now i think ‘this or that’
shake the jar i think..
roll it down some hill watch it bump
see it land.
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