There’s a flash drive
holding all the words our eighth grade year
ever held.

and a Facebook page
we spend hours staring at
searching for meaning in the pictures of people
we wish we knew.

There’s a blue sky overhead,
and a chimney spewing smoke from the remains
of a dead tree,

and we’re floating through a river
filled with the sloppy pollution
of steam.

There’s a pacman machine,
and a Pacman eating all our dots,
running in circles through a locked maze.

Maybe one day, I’ll go to Italy,
and see Venice. And I’ll float through
the drowning city,

do you remember when we
were sitting
on the empty floorboards
after we had taught ourselves
how to dance.

that was real. Not like my family
with twelve kids and a husband named Michael,
even though that sometimes seems
closer then reality.

and maybe all those kids lie,
because they’re too afraid
that the world will understand them
before they do themselves.

I think I might run away,
and roll dice to decide my future,
but I’m already doing that,
and I’m not really sure why.

I’ll probably have to stop looking for
truth in television too,
and searching for raw emotion
in pubescent eyes
because it’s not there and never will be.

To the way summer smells,
when the grill is on and the humidity
is sticking to my thoughts,
to the taste of a popsicle
when the sun is melting my sanity,

and to winter snow, when nothing looks
so perfect,
to all those moments that are real,
where we find superfluous bliss,
and maybe where we find the opposite
of what we’re looking for,

and to the risks that were never too big
and the thoughts that were never too small.

This one’s for the songs I’ll always sing,
and the words I know I won’t stop writing,
for the games I’ll play
and the games I’ll lose…

Game Over.