The Champagne Soapbox

The sweet in-between. My ghost succumbs the spiritual machine that supports both forward time and the traveling me. Life is losing the idealized time only to find a newer sense of keeping a winning score. It evens out, in-between the end and what’s more.

Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Thoughts meander like restless wind inside a letterbox. They tumble blindly and collapse into each other still moving in-out-through chewy idea noodles, store bought sauce.

Dried grass and tangled hair, both doors for the universal exhale. I turned the single-ply page and found greasy fingerprints through the thick layer of dust. I wake up falling asleep to his yesterday musk. Count his moles until the clouds wither and gently reveal dusk.

I notice myself more when I’m just a person on a crowded street. Strangers behind tree trunks with prowling curiosity toward the beat of my slapping feet. Most of the time, it was time that I spent just thinking about me. Across the universe, there is an angel willing to live and die again to feel the hungry breath the mammals eat.

There’s a man talking to himself on the street. He has clothes on and his haircut is clean. He passes by strangers that ask him for his food while he clocks his dry-cleaned-and-ironed pant crease. Most of the time, not all the time, a strict allotment of time is spent thinking about what other people perceive. Maybe because I do. All I do is think.

Say thank you when the plate is balanced, when the fork scrapes the front of my teeth, when you’re aware of the flowers splitting the awkward space between you and me. The tasteless remain sit in the crack of the bones that want to be seen. I pick at the liminal noise, with my bitten nails, and wonder what other things you don’t want to tell me. Idleness directs sincerity, homemade sauce and dirty teeth.

Something’s gonna change my world.

Something’s gonna change my world.

There’s a distant sound of a gun. A silvering son flipped the gold-rimmed eulogy pages. Careful handwriting, stone engraving. He would tell me stories about Alice jumping into the well. I want to fall asleep in the rain, just once, to see which (if any) part of me will rust. My steps are melting into the ground, and I wonder if this is the only way my words won’t wither and become rotten from worms and dust.

I’m running and my eyes start to burn from sweat. I don’t run, I’m not the best. Pick at the eyelashes until the rooster had his sung his song from the chest. Not yet. I keep a jar of flies and watch the starven-one allow the full-one drain itself to death. I try to not be morbid, but my life is complete and I’m desperate to maintain the youthful mortality until my final unrelenting breath.

A freckle on my foot, my neck. Between my chin and my lips, adjacent from my cheek. Someone missed. Ghostly lips once pressed, which is weird to think about the body I have and the bodies before who made my hair brown, eyes dark, and freckles blessed. Strange woman looking at herself undressed, impressed with how metamorphic love lingers. Greet the angels just to have them point out their past. So many mortal ones walk right past. I don’t notice.

My aunt told me freckles were kisses from sun. I’ll look directly at the sky if it meant that my hazy fate is grossly polluted with passion. Sat there in a fluorescent bikini looking at the sky. I’ve practiced so much that I can float above the floor with glowing poise, allowing the world’s exhale push me into strangers on the street.

Somebody’s gonna change my world.

Somebody’s gonna change my world.

Leather scars. I drive my car to the pond. Stare out into the dark, write words that might matter, probably not. Contemplate the marks my children might have and stain fresh paper with my depleting stardust. Throw thoughts into the letterbox. Allow them to purify while they tumble around, dodging strangers and allowing him to catch one (and read it) with his blood-blistered fingers.