"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.