there's got to be something better than in the middle

i write these lullabies for sleepy towns, about how the people in them are careful secrets buried with their half-naked feelings, their unspoken word poetry. i smoke cigarettes when no one else is around, blowing smoke in the direction of some stranger’s ghosts, remembering the time i walked across the golden gate bridge and how cold san francisco was in july. that was the summer when i lost the flecks of light that used to hide in the dark parts of your careful eyes. last fall i still felt the smirk of potential hanging around here. but then you left and sometimes i think about driving by the place where we used to climb through windows and dream under those soft mississippi sounds. there’s something dangerous about a person who reminds you of yourself. but there’s also something dangerous about never doing the stupid things. never believing in shooting stars and wish bones and mood rings, in regretting the thought that maybe you could be anything you’d let yourself be. have we always been this broke without ever knowing it? have i always been this punch drunk and left-turned when a pink knuckled sunrise has me hoping all the planets just aligned, has me thinking we could cast our shadow puppets where the past forgot where it belonged. we crushed the night’s bones between our palms touching saying “fuck it,” and my dress hung wet and cold above the shore with my ankles shaking right next to yours when you told me “i think that if you touched me right now you could feel my nightmares.” everything used to always be a helpless secret away from smacking together right in front of our young and proud faces. and i’ve got a lot of secrets, these half naked feelings i kept even when the moment left and you were already getting with new people while i lingered on for just a little bit longer. i have a lot of dark places none of you will ever know about. i’m crowded and overshadowed with ghosts, with these burning words kaleidescoped on to quiet parts of me. and i’m afraid of a lot of things, i carelessly burn through moments when i could have felt something, moments where maybe in the middle we could have felt the same thing. but i’ve got a lot of loose teeth for memories and i’m always pulling at them just to remember they can still bleed. and i’m always squinting at the dust inbetween the stars thinking “that’s what i’m made of, what am i so afraid of.” i’m afraid of miscalls and mistakes that won’t make me into the person i want to be but will keep me between the same set of goddamn parenthesis i’ve been trapped between since i turned seventeen. i’m afraid of the dark parts of me none of you have ever seen. i’m afraid of a lot of things. and i just need to know that i’m not just some careful secrets, i’m not just unspoken word poetry. i need to know that i am my potential, i am my own ellipses, and i can still become whatever i am willing to be.

--Ashli Wood