Reid@YWP

it was January
you took me to school
we blasted Hozier and I begged you
to stop at the gas station

we bought two cups of coffee
(mine was mostly milk)
and an apple turnover to share

I do not know how to bake 
something from scratch, 
like my mother’s cookies. 
With her instinctual precision 
and her habitual familial ease. 
I did not inherit this side of her.

Somewhere between a flower and a coffin
lies the colorless sunrise outside your windows.
I am devoted and still breathing like the Elin.
You are innocent and still sleeping like the Pothos.

I hardly knew her at all, wasn’t expected to. She was just a kid at the High like anyone else, who had no car. She was sitting stubbornly on a bench, determined to get a ride.

The world is full of problems. It made the man wonder why he bothered to get up in the morning. The sun was shining — but it was too bright. And was it possible for that baby across the street to wail any louder?