skeptics and true believers

wrote this in abt 15 4 this girl bc well, she asked me 2

skeptics and true believers 

you and i are the difference 

between skeptics and true believers 

at some point, this may have meant something 

to someone, somewhere, at some time,

when it didn’t rain in january 

and my jaw didn’t creak like the hinges of an old flask, 

and could be filled with something savoury much the same,

and you were still surely afraid

of things bigger than you could fit in your closet 

hiding them wickedly,

like the sinner at sunday mass;

one head bowed just like all the others, sweating in the heat

for a haunting no one else had noticed. 

now though, we have long since shut that door. 

you are the snowbird flying home at season’s end 

to a flooded forest that is unknowable-

littered with trees and the corpses of a thousand old lives 

but, stubborn, you thrash and thrash about the rippling horizon line,

forgetting that when the train doesn’t show,

you must start walking onwards. 

whatever you cry, you know i will no longer 

analyse dreams for you,

or follow the ends of rainbows with my fingertips,

running once again to rescue of the victim 

in the burning house, water splashing on our knees

as we duck under the clouds, sure of smog and smoke.

here is where i leave you:

to die wrapped in your convictions like ivy

and i, unconvinced of nearly anything anymore.

(the bite that just barely pierces through the skin,

it seems,

might hold disease yet).