GMT

quick trip to my hometown & remembered why in an everytown
the story of everyman goes something like this:

a little girl in a backpack twice her size
waddles up an Everest covered in black top
to a piano bench full of books and confessions
from shared company with equally small fingers
about how few times we’ve decided to practice that week
while looking out the glass door to a glimmering swimmering pool

until
creak

breath
and heads turned up

because no one tell Anne Frank
but youngin’s can sense the presence of a nearby forgotten soul more than a late-in-life hide n’ seekers

that was rude—shouldn’t roast angels as though they’re ghosts but while we’re at it and speaking of rude
a culture that forces a lover to stay upstairs
because small-minded people have been conditioned to care about the optics of the pleasure between your sheets

now that is haunting and oppressive and rude

or what about the hours that young girl spent
in a lofted room with faith-filled friends
singing scales and verses of praise
while our leader could share his faith but not his love and the dewy cloud of loneliness hung low in the air that’s the spirit! I feel it here.

Or is it prejudice? asking, “clear as mud?” but mud’s not clear

in an everytown with more livestock than kombucha where rural is a statement of fact
and different a dirty word
the ghosts of queer lives are impossible to deny

you won’t find them in movies
or sitting on dates lovingly staring into eyes

they are hidden hated and stunted

burning to hold someone close while others hold the power.