"untitled, 11/25/2012"
They are young like me but not as young.
There is haggardness, a weariness to them: hoarse voices,
eyes that tell stories of innocence lost but still clung to,
of youth passing into
something else.
The markings on one
man’s face,
a strand of scaly, upset flesh.
A birthmark? Or
perhaps an eerie memory etched into skin.
He stares sullenly at his food, he hardly touches it.
One girl has tattoos on the back of her neck
and wears a cheap silver necklace.
A man in overalls sits next to her
and offers a gaping smile to her every comment.
From the window I watch them linger in the cold, a red car
their centerpiece.
The two men lean on it and speak to the women inside.
A shared cigarette struggles
against the kind of wind that kills warmth, the very idea of
it.
The friends are laughing, and I remember aimless moments
when time could be spent talking in the bed of a pickup
truck, just talking;
a part of me is dying,
a part of me is dying for an hour—fifteen minutes—of time
wasted,
time spent meandering like this
in a parking lot.
