Lay down
Breathe out
Pass patience past the point of debt
Touch from
Within
Let the tables talk till the tired tread home
Say goodnight
A salute or a handshake
Takes the weight off failure to communicate
Failure fails, fragments fall into our former lives
Say goodnight
The security of failing to say what we mean
Is no barter for the pain we push aside
The school bus drives through a broken window in the corner of my mind
The kids sit in silence and stare at the sidewalk
One wonders when his cousin is flying back
One wonders when his parents will stop fighting
One is making talley marks on a math book, counting school days until Christmas vacation
The driver sits in silence, staring at stoplights and road signs, wondering how he got here
A child walks up to him, bloody nosed and crying
�Don�t step past the yellow line� he says
He would barter away his estate to reach the exuberance and wonder of these kids
He wants the bloody noses, the divorced parents, the cousins and calculations of Christmas.
It was so much easier to him then.
Everything was so much easier back then.