Trevor Abes: Writer

Everyone has something substantially wrong with them

At brunch, overcast, maybe you decide to say yes

To the adventurous and inadvisable

Further feeding your little infatuation problem

Superimposing your imaginings of things onto real things

Hoping to chisel your vision into actuality

Unmodulated by platitudes and spared the need for gurgled battle cries

 

Then there they are, in your bed

Having just ridden the subway together

From that show with the description that read good enough to attend

 

They say, I watch the news for my safety

You say, I’ve been told goals should be small

Numerous and directionless

To still have life left in them when you run

Out of original mid-life crises

 

You both hold beliefs that would scare the other

Into a different person

But your limbs and ideologies bend

In the same agreeable way

Which is close enough

When what is absent is a game

Whether you memorize an ending

Or you’re your own accomplice

And call it a new beginning

 

You say, so long as I get to flex my perspective

In seemingly insignificant ways, like

How I stock the fridge for midnight ruminations

Gash ice cream with a melon scoop

Knife a pillow to keep certain memories intact

They say, I don’t need confirmation of your desire

To exercise your right to know yourself

If it involves damaging me

I’m prepared for it to happen