[298 words]
We could have climbed into the moon. Instead
we biked in the metalshadows beneath Ohioan
hills everything hung still in the air.
The mailboxes lived and eyed us like deer and
turned back into mailboxes when we softly
gallivanted closer. I knew her eyes so well
they looked like two living
things alive on her face I
always forgot to tell her this. Or
maybe I chose not to I hope
that one day I’ll think about her
with glow of mind. I couldn’t tell
if the sky was above or below
us our bikes were metalrotted twistlumps
of garbage when they eventually fall apart we
will explode upwards all gorgeous like rockets
or crash into the pavement like
ragdolls. We didn’t care didn’t listen
to the petals they strained and clicked and clacked
and clicked. We stopped at a field:
the monstermachines for farming the land the
leering grass the complex air all of it was
abandoned and forgotten and we were comfortably
lost and we danced danced danced we
took pictures of the exquisite lack of
things. She was always inventing new strings of words, they
were all marvelous one time her and I and my dog all
slept together in one big messy pile on my bed.
All of us left the field in a trance on
the way back they talked: I sped
ahead everything was cavernous and
looming and people exist in this largeness. This
big this gargantuan these planetary stuffbunches
and can you believe it! Can you
believe it can you believe
how small we are we must
look like bugs to those things up there and we
live live live live live and we have
so much fear but we live. And
all of us could have climbed into the moon.
Max Newman is a 20-year-old writer currently residing in East Syracuse, NY. Newman’s work can be seen in Cleveland Classical, a publication dedicated to covering classical and jazz music in Northeastern Ohio. He is currently studying as an undergraduate at Oberlin College.
