It is a ten minute walk from my apartment on Broadway to the pizza place

that pays me to clean up messes made by the people of Dover, New Hampshire.

It is technically spring time, but the wool scarf and Holden Caulfield hat that block

April from my skin still smells like snow and fireplace.

The essence of New England makes the skin on our backs thicker.

 

I step out onto the sidewalk and turn left into the wind.

The path is scattered with bricks as if someone had tossed them

like horseshoes from the other side of the road into wet cement.

They are the teeth the road uses to make our feet harder for running.

My ankles have become tombstones.

They have tattooed inscriptions that only make sense if you have them too.

Everyone in town is inked.

 

As my shoes pull the ground behind me, I keep my head down.

In New England we all walk with our heads down.

Some say it is because it keeps the snow out of our eyes, some say it is the sun;

it is fundamentally known and never acknowledged that we keep our eyes down

because eye contact is never to be made when walking down the street

 

This is the day you screw gravity sideways

and drop the frying pan across the kitchenette through the window.

We break things on Weekends.

We build effigies with green glass coke bottles

and huck baseballs at it.

Take off our socks and pick up the pieces.

There is too much opportunity on the blank walls in Somersworth.

Everything sleeps when

I walk by in the dark.

I walk fly in the dark.

I fly in the dark.

I can fly.

 

What do you do with your feet?

 

Tally the sidewalk with your shoe laces.

Poetry isn’t denoted to page and stage.

Bust a hole through a bathroom wall with a marker.

There are telephone poles naked as picture frames on your street.

Your stage is only as small as you make it.

How much ink is in your blood?

Aerosol in your lungs?

Courage in your fists?

 

Hold their breath like a noose

And their attention like a blade.

We have stories to tell.

 

My current license says I am 5’7 because 3 years ago I renewed it

and decided I’d been 5’6 for long enough.

Now everything is just a little bit smaller.

I can see farther If I stand up straight.

I normally am still bent bent over and looking down when I walk.

I tell myself its the sun in my eyes but in New England there are

too many people per capita and nobody looks any other in the eye when they walk.

 

People tell me I look different.

Less people ask if I got a haircut.

More people are asking me how much to leave on a $17 tip.

I tell them $5. when you move the decimal point to the left and double the one

you get two

then you round it up to three

because seven is greater than or equal to five;

she filled our waters twice without us noticing,

thats four

and she wore a shirt that makes her look like

spontaneously she would go down on you while you watched the Superbowl.

 

5 on a 17 is fair.

 

At 5’7, I can now cook like a madman.

By which I mean I can cook chicken pot pie with a Rubick’s Cube in the middle

all while holding up a convenience store with a butter knife.

At 5’7 there are less consequences because there is more confidence.

Life moves much faster up here.

 

Tomorrow I’m going to ask her if she likes PBR, bluegrass and

forgetting to turn the porch light off when you’re distracted.

She’ll say yes yes and sometimes

and I’ll walk her to the pub and if I ask her the right questions

she’ll ask me if she could hold my hand but she wont ask with words

because we’re past that.

And I won’t ask her If I can walk her to the porch

because the way her hair falls off her shoulders like water gives me permission.

And she wont ask me if she can run her hand down my jawbone

because it’s been daring her to all night.

 

After the door closes her safely inside, I turn on my heel and walk home.

Our kiss still smoking in the air, illuminated by a forgotten porch light.

 

This heart is a shoebox in a shoe store.

It is placed on top of, under, and next to all the other shoeboxes in the shoe store.

It is on the second shelf down, just above eye level

next to the elegant models on display.

 

This shoebox is not any different than any of the others on the shelves.

Interested customers will pick it up and open it.

Some will test out what it’s got, but most just put it back neatly on the shelf.

 

Once, a cute little girl with her mother’s eyes

emptied the shoebox out and put it on her head.

 

Like a sleigh ride, she laughed.

Then her mother laughed.

Then all the customers in the store laughed like friends at a christmas party

as they commented aloud to each one another, “What a doll, she is”.

 

She jammed the shoes back into the box and tossed it on the shelf

like a toy she didn’t ask for, but tried out non-the-less for curiosity’s sake.

 

Her mom knows there is a shoebox in here with more to offer

and she will take it without ever thinking twice of the ones that didn’t make the cut.

Single moms have more current things to worry about than the past.

 

And if she does remember, it would only stay with her

the way the green street lights do.

You pass by them sometimes with acknowledgement, but mostly out of habit;

taking advantage of their offer of passage.

No one light sticks out more than the others

unless it forces you to stop for an amount of time that turns your mood sour.

Then for as long as you drive that route,

you will never forget the stench of that intersection.

 

This heart is a shoebox in a dusty shoe store.

Not all the shoeboxes are dusty, just the classics.

In a way, we define the existence of the store.

People will find the dusty shoeboxes and write their names on us with their fingers

because all anyone could wish is for others

to think of them when they aren’t there.

The notion of recreating themselves omnipotent.

We constantly strive for nothing less and we aren’t sorry for any of it

as we have no reason to be.