by Logan Ellis
Here we are,
lonely kids.
Here we are,
running through crops as braided & carefully tightened
as our ethnic heads, past the sunken tractors,
past the shadows stretched over industry.
Here we are,
lonely kids
at the center of the dinner table,
eating our shadows in three neat courses,
full of (too many?) glass hearts whittling
tea lights into single
lips, blowing lopsided kisses.
Here we are,
still pretending to drown
in the community pool because no one will notice,
the usual angles of our panic bent
through the water into shreds of light.
Here we are,
lonely kids
masturbating in the eye sockets of ghosts planted
deeply in the homes of stale
strobe lights Here we are
quiet as catapults in unnamed fields,
mighty in our guts of gore Here
we are
lonely kids
whose fathers left us with nothing
but the grass we were born on, left
mothers who didn’t realize that their
kids are the opposite of solitude,
kids who want and need
but don’t and can’t kids
like lone wolves missing vocal chords
listen to us,
listen to us: the perfect equation,
nothing special but nothing undesirable,
just as available, just as there
as an unlonely kid would be but
fuck a lonely kid,
who wants and who needs
the wants and needs of a
lonely kid? Who eats
the staple of a question mark and who
pets a dog that bites
and cries after, licking and licking
apologies into the skin?
Look,
here they are.
Pick a lonely kid from the gutter,
gently quiet their fingers from their hair,
take their hand—realize it’s as wide
as a homeless man’s—and
walk with them through
those cobblestoned streets,
say, with kindness,
“Do you want a piece of gum?”