Once Upon a Time Poems

Solace in Scars

In front of Riverside Church
on Riverside drive,
you glanced in my direction,
your eyelashes piercing through
the frigid wind,
your lips curling in crisis,
two rattlesnakes
ready to strike;
I felt icicles in my bones,
since it was mid-January,
retrospective,
in white.

Your rage is poetry,
a kind of lust,
or sadness, maybe,
but I’m not troubled;
there’s solace in scars,
for you've got no one left
to dishearten now.

What was there is a clichéd blur,
a memory alien;
since the scenery’s changed,
I’m no longer the same,
no more stuck in Woodstock,
vulnerable with faded pride,
no more sagging deep
with visible pain.

After all, I had to learn
a trick or two
to survive
and I ride the changes now;
although, no place feels
far enough away
from you.