Small Impressions
The way she looks at you when you aren’t noticing
Cat hair on the hoodie, scratching the same itch
Scabs picked, skin-leather couches
I can’t sit
On tomorrow’s ledge
I took another hit
Folgers on the lips, same old person in the mirror
The can of Coke, the currency exchange
The first mistake, my latest regret
Not to make this about me
The me who cares
What everything thinks of me
When they are thinking about me
My Social Security card is torn up beside newspaper clippings
A pair of shears, report cards, ink still dripping
The smell of flowers
The ones your mother likes, gasoline,
Grief stinks
Prescriptions, expired identification, poems
About people I’ll never meet
Oh yeah, I am most myself
When I am connected to you:
Everything that exists
Our differences
Define the lessons that remain
The sum of small impressions left a stain