Shapes diminish into the distance,
but they supersize our minds on dark
mornings, as we walk alone w/ ourselves
thru wide streets (as compared to the East),
broadening under foot, w/ land-stretching
frost from palm to nose, across index fingers,
& still busting dimensions, not to mention
what the promise of sky can do, opening
our vulnerabilities to no young son
of the plains, but a transplant from Chicago,
lost on a street, bike trail, way home
in this liminal town—so he walks
when not in training at Pizza Hut
(or McDonald’s), gone from Subway
& the bar, never chosen by the brewery,
never far from it, in his created food desert,
w/ no sugar to sweeten his story, washing
dishes but not himself—& I have failed him
on this cold morning—if we could only
reseed his purpose like restoring a prairie,
but his hello lines the telephone poles,
even shapes in the sky are his—clouds
of tiny-plastic booze bottles, power drinks,
& gas-station heroin drifting white into
blue like poverty walking him home.
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Fiction - ISSUE #28