Your naked body
Pressed on mine
We kissed

I thought that
I should feel
Something

Thrill, euphoria
Lust, love
Or bliss

But no
I felt
Nothing

I have a hard time in bars,
specifically ones I don't belong in.

Sometimes I stand at the bar,
this wooden horseshoe, among
other faces that I probably blend
into. I want to say, Can you see me,
but don't because why would they?

My friends are mostly gone,
scattered across states like bats:
blindly searching for life.

I didn't deserve them, anyway --
that's not self-pity, that's just
how it is.

At most midnights,
I find myself swallowed by
existential terror.

Like most Americans,
I want to be the best
and have more than my
parents ever did.

Anyway, I don't belong in bars
because I think I am better than
the people there and someone,
who thinks that type of stuff
doesn't deserve a drink -- just
repercussions.

I think I deserve everything
but I don't work hard enough
for the books, people, and love
I imagine.

Perhaps I am plain,
like discount yogurt, waiting
to be touched before I expire --
but there's strawberry, which,
of course, is so much better
than plain, low-fat yogurt.

There's not a universe
where I am low-fat;
why would that happen.

I am stunted: four years
behind every one else.
People like me stay
strangers: the darkest
inside the night.

They say we're degenerates
as we walk with sore shoulders,
flimsy backs, fractured dreams.

The word millennial is used like
some derogatory word --
we're meant to feel like ****
because our parents failed us.

Because smartphones help us
release dopamine.

Because we're addicted to
virtual realities.

Because we **** strangers
that we hope validate us.

No one understands why
the news says this about drugs
and this about violence -- or why
we do 'those things' and if we
have any '******* sense'.

It's beyond them.
Maybe beyond us.

It's higher than our weekends;
lower than our expectations.

Knolls of potatoes glow like gold
spreading the shine of good harvest
fading in the dark of her eyes.

The bounty is a curse on her purse
for as long as she recalls
market grows slow
prices rule low
abundance eats away the toil.

Yet so long her breathes willed
she would come back to the field
feeding herself away
to the soil.

you look at me again
you touch me
and i think i might
erode/
slip through
your fingers

knowing you won't let go
i drink my lavender tea
with agave nectar
so when you finally kiss me
you will taste
the gardens
you've planted

i can feel my heart race
like it's running somewhere
far away from here
and i decide
that it's running somewhere
with yours

nothing else matters