To High School semi-sweethearts

A letter best unsent

November XX, 1999

To whom she once concerned:

Your promises eclipsed even the awe of your brown-ish skin and endless eyes. My own stretched to match, stumbling in your wake of popularity.

Library escapes — photo by Redd Angelo

If you saw a future in my rapid conquering of new, remedial, pathetic attempts to challenge my elitism, my Pennsylvania-bred learning — I saw one in the long hallway to my sister’s classroom. Each holding a half-chewed hand — still wet with the pain and saliva of her coping — we led and were led to see how all this foolish talk of marriage might work.

When the rest of the world, the hallway itself fell away to ruin in service of the moment. To remember true presence — is to remember it did exist and can again. By Andrew Amistad

Lessons have come and shown my flight instinct — in rebellion and contradiction of all your mother worked to give you, to expect in continuing her line of our species — once the trapping of my own making settled between us.

Square hats were tipped in freedom, slung casually while walking divergent paths. By Jonathan Daniels

Whenever there is nothing left to imagine, if only for a moment’s capture, all faith and future flees.

I have run from each of them, as I ran from you and the looming expectations of my broadcast perfections — and the feeble, angry young boy growing taller and further from the forgiving allowance of our innocence.

The novelty and nuance felt and feels as cheap and flammable — like the dried and dense wood I once cut with chain-driven saws. It was drug and burned in the Gila, smoke rising as warning: We would burn to ash, threaten and unsettle those of our worlds — before and without melting in the coffee colors of teenage dreams.

In memoriam and in respect of the power of time-capsuled possibility,

The New Kid in Town