We Don’t Have Views Like You Where I’m From

We don’t have views like you where I’m from:
a twisted, stormy, madness riddled with
bits of magic. Your eyes are curious,
not because they hold curiosity but
because they propel me further into
some uncertain abyss. We are often
held captive by our wonderment, and
we are made to be all that better for it.
What are you even, I wonder. The odd
driftwood from days past or a lost page
blown back by bold winds? Backwards
is still a direction that draws caution,
yet too forward is something I wish not to be.
We slip into time, always either in step
or out of tune, dazzled by the multiplicity
of any given moment. Plural become
verb compounds, phrases become anecdotes
become conversation become confessions.
The obvious course is inevitable, marble tongued
and soft-eyed riddles laid bare like slices
of conjecture, dusted rinsed and peeled back
and set to boil. Was everything always this way?
Soft pink turns red turns maroon turns brown
like the dried scales of skin on our lips again.
Again. The same wounds rear their ugly bruises,
grinning quietly waiting for the mallet,
but there are no carnival songs or lights
or fairies or cotton candy clowns fortunes
and the big bright wheel to take us up up up
to only drown and remind us of our lack of reverie.
The flight lands, an arrival that is simultaneously
a departure. The conversation ends and
anecdotes and phrases are just loose nouns
separated by boundless pages of words unuttered.
The masks crack, and we wash away any
residual pretence. One day, I am reminded
that we don’t have views like you where I’m from.
A twisted stormy madness riddled with bits
of the tragedy that became us and not us, and the
fact that neither have looked the same since.