I sit at the edge of the quiet playground and contemplate why I left the way I did. Noel will be mad at me, I know, but at the moment I don't feel bad about yelling at her and then slamming our front door shut in my anger.

She deserved it. With her smug face and her hands placed gracefully on her delicate hips. The stance of a girl who thought she was in the right.

No. I don't regret leaving like that, but I do regret leaving without a jacket. I stare down at my worn sneakers that I had pulled on in my hasty leave, and sigh. The cold seeps through the holes in the bottoms of my shoes and my bare arms have goose bumps running up and down them.

A bird lands a few feet from where I sit on the plastic curb surrounding the playground. I whistle at it and it flies off to join it's friends in the trees. The sky is growing dark as the sun sets, leaving the apartment buildings in front of me in a gloomy shadow.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Noel didn't deserve to be shouted at like I just did only ten minutes ago. She was drunk anyways and the other guy was the one who was flirting with her, not the other way around. And she called me right away when she realized what was happening.

It was my fault for letting her go to the bar alone. My fault for getting jealous when she was obviously not encouraging the dude. And now, sitting out here, alone and freezing, it is my fault for running off like I did.

And I didn't even bring a jacket.

I sigh again and look up at the gloomy apartment buildings. No way I can go back now. Noel will only be angry at me for yelling at her. But the sky is getting darker by the minute and the wind blows over my already cold arms.

Maybe if I tell her I'm sorry and that I will sleep on the couch tonight...

"Hey."

I look up, startled by the voice breaking the quiet around me. Noel stands a few feet away, right where the bird had landed before.

"Hi," I mumble, shuffling my sneakers on the bare ground. "I'm sorry."

"I know. It doesn't take long for you to realize when you are in the wrong."

Noel smiles softly and I grin back, glad that she isn't mad. She holds something up and I smile even wider when I realize it's her purple hoodie.

"Maybe next time you stomp out in the middle of fall, you should bring a coat," she says with a smirk.

"Yeah, or maybe I should stop stomping off, and face my problems instead."

"Sounds like a plan."

An idea.

Such an abstract thing.

What exactly is an idea, and why is it a thing?

I have ideas and hopefully you do to.

But do we really fully understand what it is?

Do either of us fully realize that almost EVERYTHING we do is an idea?

We love, hate, despair, rule.

What does it really mean to do any of those things?

Everyone has a different explanation for what it means to love someone or rule a country.

No one can explain what it is to hate in the same way as the person next to them could.

Because it is all just an idea.

An invisible, inaudible, intangible, ABSTRACT thing.

And we each have a different idea of what an idea is.

So let's just leave it as that.

Don't try too hard to understand the idea of an idea or you will start to go in circles.

An idea is just...

An idea.

White people screaming “this is our home, we have a right to protest!”

Except you stole this land

and only like the speech that suits your supremacy

You can’t love America and hate Democracy

Try to stage a coup and topple its foundations

Fueled by hate and lies and Bud Heavy

Breaking windows and hoisting flags and spitting virus

won’t save your man or any soul you have left

Police give them the white glove treatment

Try to “de-escalate” and “talk”instead of their usual approach of

Shoot first, ask questions later

Because they only do that when your skin has more melanin

On the day a Black woman who once picked cotton in a past not so long ago

celebrates her son’s election to the Senate

Using a system designed to keep him out

Two worlds clashing

Their dissonance amplified for the world to hear

It sounds like we were the savages all along

Another pour

another night,

perhaps I should

perhaps I could,

plunge into depths unknown

obscure my vision, drown,

but I will not.

For I am a

miserable

son of a saint

and cannot bring myself

to completely undue

the good she made,

hope buried deep.

Somewhere inside

she shines in me.

© Jasper A. Flintsmith 2021

#poetry #newpoetry #addiction #depression #parents #love #hope

I wish you don’t think of what we could have been because the next time we meet self love will have tangled around my spine like weeds who refused to wilt when the sun refused to shine, wildflowers will populate the forest floor of my heart welcoming home the birds, the birds who will have rooted themselves in my throat and sing nothing but tenderness and warmth, wild roses growing free will adorn my cheeks no longer subject to the harsh pesticides your words once had on me. Oh I swear I will till the barren soil you left inside me and plant row after row of olive trees until I am filled to the brim of peace and you’d have to spend 100 lifetimes to uproot everything I have fought for. So the next time we meet I wish for you to just pass me by because I will have bloomed into the person I’m meant to be.

she fell in and out of streetlights

in a drunken haze

of her own making,

a wildflower cocktail poured between her lips

made of moonlight and air,

a kiss from the night

who held her in unfeeling arms,

allowing her to love the way she wanted to

taking everything

swirling every intangible sip

sweet on her tongue, liquid night

falling in and out of streetlights

in a drunken haze,

wandering the silken folds of her own caress and forgetting her longing,

flinging herself into her desire

and drifting

fizzing with the bubbles of her own

mind-made

champagne

Words can’t hurt you.

Really?

The test results came back positive.

You’d be pretty if you lost weight.

We did everything we could.

I just don’t feel that way.

We need to talk.

It was a boy.

We regret to inform you…

I’m sorry, I can’t do this.

Goodbye.