Post-Teen After-thoughts by Jack Caseros

Who are you now? With your blog, and eyebrow ring, like you tried to seal your eye shut. All in retaliation? Make me furious enough to poke holes in my skin, then go vegan, and take self-portraits at three in the morning. I wish you could’ve done that to me. Instead

You have all your vanities on display for strangers. Poor Catholic girl with no panties. Water in your wine glass but you’re still the first to fall. A tidy manger in the suburbs but the straw’s all gone. Scarecrows

Line up along the curb for rush hour. No one has slept in years but they’ve never felt better. There is a smell of ethylene and eucalyptus shampoo in the air. When the bus turned the corner you took photo after photo, framing the bus as it grew too big for either of us to ride on it. Consequently

There was no other way home. So

Let’s take each others hand because there is nothing familiar. Now I get lost so often I never get that anxiety. Sometimes I take the bus blindfolded so I get that emptiness, stoked by looking around and seeing nothing I know. You must know what I mean. I’ve seen the photos. They’re beautiful, but that’s just because they’re you. Pixelated

And your avatar always looks like a mugshot. Can never be happy on film, like any given moment isn’t worth pasting a default smile on your face for. That’s okay, you were always funnier when you weren’t expecting joy. You always said forget everything else. Touch

Everything. Touch it twice. Until it feels rough on your hands, like it’s rubbed off on you. Someday all those cut-out photos you made will fall together and we’ll both laugh suddenly, but nothing will change. Because

You are someone beyond me, some new person I never realized was in you. Must’ve been picked up, or hatched, after my weight was gone. Now you are free to flutter, butterfly, just like the tattoo on your shoulder blade. Dance naked for sudden friends and never sweat. Too sweet for insincerity. Too old to be genuine. Someday

We will find another way home.

© 2012 Jack Caseros

Jack Caseros is a Canadian writer and ecologist. His work has recently appeared in steelbananas, Eschatology Journal, and the Eunoia Review. His first novel, Onwards & Outwards, was self-published in February 2012, under his independent publishing organization: Kaleidoscope Reality. You can find more about Jack & Kaleidoscope Reality at: www.jackcaseros.webs.com

Comments are closed.