_{American Dreams}

Everybody here knows what time it is

Time for lunch, another fancy brunch

One more park bench along the beach that fits

Only two

A bench to sit upon, dream of houses, kids, and cars upon

Call it a Volvo bench, if you will

A toast to all the lovers of the world

Every single car sold in a lot

Sits more than one

Not un, not I, nor my, alone

Once I believed a man who sold ideas to me

Said to me

Those doors

1,2,3,4

The kind with room for more than four

Bigger families better than small

Would be mine, ours one day

Just give it time, he'd always say

His loving eyes, a caramel hue

Staring into mine, a pale-ish blue

Too much emotion, tears falling in

Twos

Unison

Yours for me and mine for you

Lying on the bed, empty wine glasses out

Talking about nothing

Yet, we talked about it all

You said to me, we've become a we

Like those last names shared by two

Think Smiths or Jones

He said

These bodily imprints on which we lie

Are not going to be altered by the passing of time

Our smiling hearts will still be tightly tied

By the same time next year

He said to me:

We'll laugh together in the following Fall

And in the Fall after that

And the one after that

An annual tradition

To which we'd toast a glass of Kendall

Our children's names perfectly mapped out

In our smiling heads, bloated by hormonal gaps

Between the two lovers who never had to try

At happy

It's Fall again now and I sit on the park bench by myself

People rushing past, after all

It's cold outside

A declaration I find on the wooden seat

Mine the only head it cares to meet

I sit alone and wonder if they ever owned a Volvo

You know, the four door kind