Free & Clear ...

You can always run away.

Just one more time—

                                         Like when your family moved,

                                              Miles beyond your reputation.

                      You worked out every day,

                      Until “Remember me?” made her eyes go wide.

                            “I didn’t recognize—you look…different.”

You swallowed spotted fungi & paper tabs,

Then crawled to the bathroom, sucking air as loud as an ocean cave,

Looked over the sink and introduced yourself:

          “That’s an alien; that’s an animal. I don’t think we’ve ever met.

            I. Am. Thisss.         {breathe} Are you too?

                                               Heh—right on.”

           You left a relationship,

                     heart flaking scabs, identity half-custody, soul geriatric,

                               And so dazedly climbed somewhere stinging hot/deadly high,

                               here traded smiles with another sweat-salted pair of cheeks and

                     remembered “Wait, I’m still 23.”

                               You drank numb your anxieties,

                               Until every moment not drunk was a buzzing tide-foam

                                         of “OhshitOhShitOhSHIIIT…”

                                         incoming.

                                                   You ate only vegetables and meditated,

                                                              Until every moment was Simple, still—

                                but that was unfamiliar, weirdly peaceful, lacking monsters, SO!

                 You went downtown and got in a fist-fight,

                  started talking politics and debating religion,

                          Until everything was a war of Right and Wrong.

You shaved, grew a beard, shaved again, ate bacon-wrapped IPAs,

ran off that bouncing sub-naval skin purse,

           Until you didn’t care what anyone thought,

           as long as you liked you—

                     and you weren’t 23 | or even 32 |anymore.

You can always run away,

Just one more time—

But what if?

What if you were free & clear?

Can you even imagine

Being fully you?

In every direction:

                                There is no kiss long enough,

                                       No sunset orange bold enough,

                                No loud laugh limb-jiggling violently enough

to convey

Everything in you, at any moment, conscious or auto-driven,

with and through the

once-you/will-you…

So pick a day.

Someone will call you crazy.

Someone will put you in jail.

Someone will laugh “that’s refreshing”

And if no one posts your bail…

           At least you were real.

You’ll sit on the cold floor.

Slow down all your dream wheels to nothing.

And feel.

—just one more time.