For me it was like picking up a can of teargas,
then huffing it – remembering paint and glue and you.
Not the premium experience for me as it was for you.
That blue plastic rose I carried around,
unborn of fertile ground,
oozed out hot-to-cold in some fake-plant plant,
for you to sniff all day to stay off the ground,
the translucence of your watery eyes
allowing me only a bit
to see some into your unsobered soul.
Hurting, remembering that time I slipped on the stairs,
fell into the whirligig of tumble and fall,
down a special rabbit hole, all of it, I fell,
holding out that flower for you to inhale,
gravity’s arm is always held high at the end.
And cracked a rib,
the astronomically high cost of love for me,
the unflustered floating, hot-air balloon ride for you,
up there, I make you out still wondering stares
somewhere for me as I lay flat
on the floor downstairs below you.
When it’s sobriety for one
and all other-worldly high for the other,
life becomes a constant confused doublespeak
between, or more like against, the two,
of stoned thoughts for you and sober ones for me.
Makes sense, we could no longer make sense
to, of each other, you floating farther away
and meaning less in your fading speech from being.
It pays, I’d say, to stay sober and of this world
so’s not to endanger yourself,
me lovingly staring at you
and trying to walk downstairs at the same time.
Where in the stratosphere have you sailed?
Did you ever come back, land in soft fields,
and stay grounded? Or are you gone?
It’s tough to learn
of anyone’s battles with reality lost.
I’ll breathe more easily in time, I suppose,
when the ghost of my cracked rib for you,
still sometimes aching’s, gone.
Lanning Lee 