Meet Me in St. Louis Pt. 1

Two is my least
favorite number, one
a close second.

I hate their taste of
either/or, this/that, only, last,
filling my mouth
with separation and desperation.

When researchers tried to quantify
loneliness, even they had to ask
at least three questions.

Sometimes I catch loneliness
dressing up as being right
like a four year old wearing high heels,
like cubic zirconia clutching a Gucci handbag,
like that time I wrote a dead dad telling him
his son made a mistake leaving me.

Being right isn’t flattering
when it only comes in black and white and Nihilism
never looked good on me, but neither
did organized exclusion,
so if I unpin the edges of this map
outlining lands of all or nothing
I’m hoping we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.

Somewhere like St. Louis:
midwest, middle america, middle of the city
still split by the delmar divide, St. Louis.
It’s where my conscience first met chaos
they both got drunk one night, started throwing punches,
and I don’t remember much, but now everything looks gray.
Changed my whole view.

Let’s call it existential
reconsideration. There doesn’t
always have to be a crisis for people to
pay attention. Climb down
from that rooftop and whisper
your worries into
my caverns.

Wait for them
to bounce back softer versions
of what you spoke in, see if the echoes
sound like together we
won’t look down.

We’re staring straight at the unknown
and still fearful of falling;

We can be
both/
and