So I haven't really found a better title for this, but I'm going to keep thinking. I also haven't changed my intro to explain the new name of this world. That will happen. Someday. When I'm done procrastinating. Tomorrow. Okay.

A knot of fraying nerve endings, damp
with liquid electricity.
A small drowned form in this city,
graying brownstone buildings fading to memory
and weeds sprouting in sidewalk cracks,
buses barreling onward because you can't
ever go back
and the brakes always whine and screech
and with a deafening release of air,
each
bus driver expectantly waits
to take me somewhere,
but they don't see me.
They don't care
if I'm going
to the next street
or Tenessee
or to the bustling colossus of a mall complex or
straight to Hell.
Their eyes drift over me
and catch on the next small thing
of mild interest,
a string
of eye-opening moments in a dull day
among timeless dull days,
counting the ways
that their lives could be something.
I know that well.
And it scares the living Hell
out of the deepest recesses
of my mind,
always reaching to find
something better
and sinking down instead into dull days
among timeless dull days.
Trudging.
Mindlessly.
And endlessly grudging
those we can't help but to admire, catching
smiles.
Stretching
money,
driving miles
upon faded dull miles,
and wishing for my eyes to alight
upon beauty--
no.
To live it
every day.
Is this what life has in store for me?
Reams of half-finished pages of
not-quite-there
drifting to the floor in the summer heat,
empty cereal bowls
and black holes
in my throat that will never stop pulling
and never be full,
years sliding into years
of never asking
why,
never shedding
ghost tears, but...
at least
I can still see
the sky.
And I have the potential to be
something I never even dreamed of,
and if I'm on the ground and you're in the window,
you can see
my distinctive figure, and if you want to
you can know it's me
and that's all you can ask from a city
just as all I can ask of life is hope--and maybe.
And the spark of wonder
in glassy eyes
that reflect infinitely
when they can still see
the sky.
That spark alighting--
a knot of fraying nerve endings--
unraveling--
relax.