The stairs are very rickety
so you creak
you creak
creak
even when you try your hardest
to be quieter than
all the crickets
that you hear through the walls
and the all the other ordinary night sounds that
people sleep through
Then you pause
you pause
pause
But your parents snore
sleeping off drinks
that they bought at a bar
where old people go
to get away from kids
So your socks
inch
down
to the
bottom
step.
And here, you can go back
but you still run out of your square
soft
lawn
to find a
square
cold
box
that interesting people call
an apartment
But you call it a bird's nest
because it's high
It seems even higher at night,
when your friends are high and
you're high.
And the air is polluted with a
smoky mist
that makes you dumber than usual
when you breathe it in
But you're not high and mighty
like your mom was
no you're
mighty and high
invincible and infinite
and it makes the light of your
neighborly boxes
look so close to you,
like, you can just jump to them.
And you can
And you do
But you don't, not really.
And now you know
the real bottom wasn't
the end of your rickety stairs
And now you can't scurry up
past the snores
into your bed
But you can still sleep
and
that's the only thing you can do
actually