Taking Strolls

Memorial Day 2021 Poem

The cracks
in the sidewalk
are synonymous
with the folds in my brain

my city runs
that deep in my psyche

marathon trauma
or sprint conditioned bliss

depending on your kink

most of my regrets
involve crosswalks
I never kept to

or the few couple of
shallow motel beds
I never slept in

and maybe this
is a self prescribed
attempt at remorse

to keep them demons
from venturing outside of
their happy little cul-de-sac

I once asked a passion,
''what did we look like
in our best what if?''

she said, ''we looked
like the first flowers
that bloom after war

or the fresh paint
hanging on the wall
after a trap raid

or even like 2 clouds
swimming aside
to let the sun breathe''

but our conversation
is highly illegal

so we look more like
without a bond
and no attorney

we look like beach cruisers
trying to travel in reverse

and we feel as if our convos
are break-in-case-of-emergencies

in the instance things
finally go right

so we can never say we left

we never abandoned the trap

we never forgot about the meter

and I never forgot about her either

so every time a line makes the crosswalk

it notices her

walking the along the folds

plucking petals from what ifs