When you're feeling full of hot bubbles
like a shaken-up bottle of soda water,
drive down and pour yourself into the intercoastal.
Light up a half-smoked Black
and perch on the smooth back of a salt-worn bench,
feeling the crash of each dark wave in the soles of your feet
as you watch the biggest ship you've ever seen
chug past and wonder
how many of its crew speak your language?
Are they undomesticated gypsy wanderers,
loving as you love new places and unpolluted stars,
or unhappy desperates who could not afford their dreams?
You stare at the single blinded window,
straining to catch sight of another lonely smoker,
because that is a language anyone can speak.
Enjoy
the sweet taste of your cigarette,
the jangle of energy it sends through your nerves;
the fact that you are fine with glancing too often
at the still-dark screen of your phone,
waiting for a message that will never come.
You are fine with the
dark blue like silk of the sky,
a glowing rounded whiteness in the corner.
You are fine even if there is no one else to sit
in unspoken appreciation of all the beautiful things
we have not yet over-loved.
You will remember rougher moments later,
when every second isn't flowing as smoothly into the next,
and you aren't as happy to be alive in that heartbeat,
but they are only memories, and,
like scars, do not hurt too badly
anymore.