FADED PAPER HEARTS AND EMPTY STREETS

 

Paper hearts and torn edges, crumpled in pockets of these old tattered jeans.
Like dollar bills left and forgotten.
Could I buy yesterday back?
Trade the pieces for something whole,
like love before it's lost?
Napkin doodles left soaking in alcohol spills,
the evidence of what now goes missing.
Hearts and Hugs, tricky words of double meaning
that were somehow misread, but the pen kept writing.
Ink the soul with permanence, a stored memory
safely placed in the backseat of the mind.
I drive the car onward, with the eyes fixed on the rearview mirror
like a traveler unsure of their direction.
Sidewalks seem a bit more desolate as I pass the streets in these midnight hours.
There is a quiet that crawls the skin,
a thousand pricklings stabbing in the darkness.
Caught at the light, i stare from yellow to red.
Full stop and long enough to pull paper hearts from the pocket.
Long enough to remember early morning hours not that long ago.
Late night unravellings through telephone lines now distorted with static.
The red glare of traffic lights bursts like a prism through the glass,
a sound of emptiness surrounds.
I'm running down these roads,
anything to keep me from home.
An uncomfortable escape that brings little comfort,
in between distractions of one lifeline to the next.
Hours filled chasing down happiness
when the taste of it already fell upon the tongue
and lingers.
The fall into silence when two connect, drowning out the here and there
like a vacuum.
A savoring richness of strangers unfolding.
A telling of secret tragedies lost in ripped out private pages of books only half read.
An incomplete understanding of a woman hidden behind a mask and other misperceptions.
Eyes wide shut,
and hearts narrowly opened.
Coded Messages in this bottled letter
run ashore on the island of a lonely dweller
as I come to Ghostly intersections
and red traffic lights reading full stop