(One)

It’s all in that sunset,
and it’s just a beautiful mess
of blue, purple, orange and an evening
that should have belonged to Friday or Saturday.

It makes you wonder if you might have
ever seen anything like it when you were a kid.

You can’t remember.
You feel bad about that.
You resolve to have a better memory.
You obviously aren’t serious about it.

But it feels good to at least think it over.

Feels halfway decent to realize
that the tired tend to appreciate what a good sky
and the best weather all week can do towards
fantasies of possibility.

Seventy-five degrees.
No better,
no worse,
and the roads are empty for at least twenty miles.

One of these days,
you’re going to tell everyone that you’re going
on vacation to that city in Northern Canada
where your great-grandparents spent their honeymoon.

You’ll be the first thing to go.
The second will be your cell phone
heading straight into the garbage.

It’ll be a desperate scheme
and a weird exercise in improvisation.

You’ll be overly cautious when it comes to smiling
and a nervous wreck for weeks to come.

You might even use a fake name
and stuff from your best friend’s childhood
if the casual conversation turns personal.

You might.
You might surprise the hell out of everyone.

Or you might just go to work in the morning
and pretend to care about your sister’s wedding
over deadlines and that stupid Facebook instant messenger.

That’s probably what’s going to happen.

Still,
the sunset is 1930s handsome,
the weather is perfect,
and you don’t have to be home until later that night.

The beach is only ten minutes away,
and no one else wants to go.

**********

(Two)

My body is tired,
and I’m lazy enough to ask the old friends
driving by to give me a lift three blocks down
to get back to my apartment.

No one takes me up on it.
They wave from the front seat
and close the curtains for the windows in the back.

I stay up late,
wait for the weather to cool down
and wonder what you’re up to.

Five a.m.,
the kingdom has a bus stop four miles away,
and I’d love to just stop talking.

I’d love to hear your voice.

I’d love to hear you tell me a lot of things.

*********

(Three)

You’ve got a lot of nerve.

Then again,
so do I.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
Copyright © 2025 Gabriel Ricard