Airport, March 2nd

/*This is supposed to look like an airplane pulling a banner, but I think I'm going to have to work on it some more.*/

Orion
stood high
in the sky and the
airport beacon was flashing a lonely, steady green white white, green white white over us...We five poured secrets into the night: writhing, flagellated stories with tails of “don’t ever tell anyone.” We poured our hearts into the night, in puffs of misty, quickened breath because the stars were too far away to hear and the night air was too cold for our misdemeanors to metastasize.
We nestled together
like lovers and we
shook, sometimes
with chill, but mostly with laughter.
And in the grand scheme of things,
conscious of Orion’s watchful eyes
and stern
stance –
I
s
h
o
u
l
d
have felt like nothing.
The truth was that I felt
like a part of everything,
right then. Part of a whole
so meaningful and huge
that the cosmos burned
that night with envy rather
than pride – and every pulsing
star glowed in jealous rage –
if only we weren’t too far to see.
I used to wonder what kind
of mark I would leave on these
people – like my name in
paint on this place, on
their minds. I know now I
will remember their mark
on me – nights like that, with
my favorite people and
our secrets spilling
into the air to die –
far longer than any
paint could stain a wall.

Top of the Ladder

We were huddled there for warmth,
under the beacon that always guides me to that place,
and even when our hands strayed under the blanket
his skin was merely warm where it should have been electric.

The touch was smooth, and pleasant, and meaningless.

And my only unspoken secret that night was that it’s over,
and done
and I’m finally okay with
everything.

Because in the magic of that moment,
it should have been electric, but I was grounded.

But even where I was susceptible to the charge,
even high in the rafters of the school,
a hundred and
twenty
feet
from
the
planks
of
the
stage
floor,
with our hearts in our throats
and our limbs trembling
with nerves and regrets and life,
when I should have been moved to hold him,
it was unromantic.

I thought more of soothing his trembling than of how to get him alone.
And that’s it.
It’s over.
We’ve broken the barrier,
and his gravity compared to the earth’s is weak.

His hold on me was weak, and I’ve long since broken it.
There’s no place like the top of a ladder to learn a lesson.

On the Effect of Boys

Her voice is strong,
and carries no hint of storms to come –
and her eyes stare straight ahead.
She is purposeful.
And I’m watching her in profile,
admiring her matter-of-factness,
when the first tear slides down her nose.
And the cloth of her t-shirt
was resistant to absorbing all that sorrow,
all that frustration,
all that hopeless broken-heartedness.
And the tears just gather on the fabric
like there’s nowhere else to go,
and they’re shining on her collarbone
under fluorescent lights.
And finally they sink in –
and this is beautiful
because she’s been wrestling the sorrow for a long time
because she loved him,
and he could change,
and she loves him,
and he’ll change.
And she wrestled the sorrow so long
that she didn’t notice when it pinned her,
and she didn’t stop fighting it
until just now

when the tears soaked through her t-shirt
and down toward her heart.

...

The ladder is rusted, rough against my palms,
and I am climbing toward the moon that smiles sadly
on everything, but especially on this:
the end of an era.

The ladder is rusted – I feel the residue of it between my fingers
more than I see it in the semi-dark.
I can hear him breathing somewhere

below.
I imagine his forearms must be shaky like mine.
His breathing makes me nervous.

The rungs don’t stop, and I handle them as they come.
They’re just filing from the ceiling like DNA,
like a trellis to a bedroom window.
The moon lives up here, among the cables
that support the stage curtain.

The names and graduating years of all the visitors of this place
cover the walls –
and the letters painted by scared kids
with shaky forearms
are all that’s left, now that the rust has washed off their palms
and their diplomas sit, dusty and framed, in boxes and corners all over town.

The memory of those walls and
the rust on my palms and
my trembling incriminate me,
And I walked out of here with a guilty smile up at the moon,
who smiled sadly back on this last night of an era.

I remember betrayal, and I don’t relish admitting the lie –
but the slow panic of climbing down from a height has receded,
and the sky is open above me now
and Orion is standing guard,
and it seems like spring is here forever.

School’s as good as over and I’m as good as gone –
without even a splash of shaky paint to commemorate my presence.

I didn’t think I’d feel guilt at this,
my only stunt to date –
but a full moon shoots my shame back at me
with a sad smile I’m projecting onto it –
and finally the parking lot is empty
on this night at the end of an era.

Aftermath

The sky was a magnifying glass
and when I looked beyond the road,
everything got bigger and bigger
and blurrier and blurrier –
and it seemed that sun and sky
were collaborating to sear the trees away
like insects – and the forest roiled
just like a kicked anthill.

I’m sorry. I still can’t believe it.
The truth is that what I saw,
through a haze of myopia and cough syrup,
was a lot of red dirt and piles of striped rock
where the forest should have been.

Oklahoma will rise up to bury its dead,
in time, when the fear is less sharp
and the char has receded.
When the tree-limbs get their casts removed,
and the bandages from that last ice storm
come off at last,
Oklahoma will care for the dead.

For now the land is littered with
broken branches and abandoned tree trunks –
the red dirt and glare of newly-exposed rock
show through on the roadside
where just last summer we both
thrived off of dappled light
on the pavement.

For now the trees look like cancer patients
and the sleepy little winding road
through camp is a battleground
surrounding a stormed fortress.

And there stands what’s left of the house,
marking the tomb of at least one fallen hero.
The siding lies around it like heavy armor
shed to give its wearer one last easy breath
before death – and underneath,
the red wasp nests cover the boards
like welts, like wounds. Like wasps do.

And this is the last viewing before burial –
the last visit before demolition.
And there it stands. A fallen fortress
at the end of a bloody march.

Something tells me it will stand ready
for the next battle
before Oklahoma has even begun to heal.