Picking Melons
Josh Banday
She wants romance and singing in rose gardens, clinging to each other in tears and facing the giants that are our fears. She wants the sun on a rusted platter, telling the world it doesn’t matter, and
burning dollar bills that make the fat men fatter. She wants to hover six feet above the ground where other people’s feet will tread. She’d rather wear the black shirt than the red. She’s been touched when she didn’t want to be, someday she’ll overcome her history…
She’s fifteen stories high, and six feet under. She’s got shoes that turn into rockets so there’s no
stopping her. She never quite belongs but she’s so goddamn popular. And I just want to kiss her with the lights on.
She’s allergic to strawberries, thinks thinking is necessary, thinks drinking is necessary, drinks thinking about how scary it would be to fight bears. Tells every single person about how much she cares because she swears she was listening, but what were you saying?She’s spent less hours living than the hours she spends praying and spends more time leaving than the time she spends staying and I am trying to get her to stop for a second and think.
Maybe I don’t care about the connotations of the color pink, the feminine archetypes who wash dishes in sinks, how the world is warming and the government stinks like bloodstains and paper and justice and ink.
Maybe I just want to be still as the stitch on her blouse.
And maybe she wants the same.
And maybe we’ll miss each other like cinders in the flame.
And maybe we’ll meet again in the produce section.
Picking melons.
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