Not a Haiku

Your freaking eyes.

And entropy will cease to reign.

Someday, I'm going to live this holiday right.
We're going to fast. We're going to serve. We're going to invite other people over and say our grateful things in one eternal round.
Once, we're going to visit that great big city to see those great big balloons. Lots of times, we'll stay home and play football in the yard. We'll rake the rest of the leaves and play in them, if it's not too cold.
We'll talk about Thanksgivings past and Christmas to come, and we'll tickle each other, right down to our toes.
I will not say what will not be there. Just that, someday soon, we're going to live this holiday right.

Brought beneath Big Lots on Thanksgiving Day

There's a blinking orange neon light above, on a brown, brown building.
But it's not the brown of turkeys and gratitude; it's the brown of dirt and reconciliation and just maybe the ambition I need.
The exclamation point gave out a long time ago, and the "t" is tiring now.
I want to go home, but I don't know where that is. I wonder if I can be strong again.
And somewhere back in my mind, in a place half cynical and a quarter wise, is the admonition to get the "I' out of those sentences.
It is only later that the realization comes: maybe if my neon light burns out, something brighter will shine.

Roommate, Friend

I think I told the whole story to my oatmeal.
But you didn't care for the glare in my blue eyes
And instead saw into my heart.

Thank you.

Thanksgiving

I am grateful for the girl with the red hair and snickerdoodles, the old man on Tiffany's bus, the boy with warm hands, the far-away one who knows the septic tank story, the people in the newsroom that needs kittens, the mother who likes giraffes, the roommates with artful heads
and also everyone.

Insert appropriate song lyric here

In a moment of impatience and memory and temptation and almost tears, I can not, or do not, look at the picture on the wall. Instead, my eye falls to a drawing posted on the side of Emily's dresser. For moments before I realize it, I am staring at the glitter-written word, "forever."

645 (I'll-be-cursed-if-I-call-them-anything-but) glorious days remain.