This begins with a question
How to thread a handful of years
Through a thousand words
And at first, I went for that
Sunset over Palmer Field
Over the classes where I learned about
Bioluminescence and serpent hoards
And what to do when a screw’s
Let loose through the fan of your laptop
(Which is mostly panic, by the way)
But I couldn’t quite catch the wisps of
Orange giving way to the night
So down I walked past
Two theatres, tonight with no moon,
Halls formed from paper monsters
From which celebration echoes
A courtyard of black-feather leaves
Where first this all began
Where I found a world of
Strange music and a good few
Kind words of encouragement to
Try this all out in the first place
And I kept on going
Stumbling upon the
Pothole pock-marked path
Taken in a parade of maize and blue
Trying to keep the cold at bay
I ended up before the stadium
A family necessity when our weekend came
Where I realized that the screams of a crowd
Are quite contagious
And I smile with the static
Still singing in my ears
But this isn’t quite it
So I wander a little more
And the sky darkens in
The sweet scent of shadowy lilacs
As I turn my attention upward
And there it is
How do I write a goodbye?
How could it hold
Every last thank you for the
Laughter I was let into?
I think of every
Walk with a friend spent trying to
Rot each other’s brains when
They became too full of phantoms
Every evening spent shouting at dice
Made of benevolent stones and troll skulls
With the friendliest chaos one can conjure together
Every post-it note needed to make a
Smile that stood in a window for a semester
And maybe one more that stays a little longer
Every mask I carefully made
As I joined in the revelries of
The one night each year I start to come back
From the ghost I can make of myself
Every strum and song and
Wild of words hustling towards happier trails
Every moment before the lights dimmed
And showed their rising beams of dust
Because each scene was built beforehand
And sung of afterward, the words a flash
Across a screen we all crowded around
Scenes made of plastic trees and hot glue gun thyrsi
Pinprick green constellations and roses, real and parchment
And all the days spent
Going from forests to films
To markets to midnight vaults
To arcades and on across Ann Arbor
Always with those I will be
Grateful to call my friends
All of that
How does goodbye hold all of that?
Well, it doesn’t
So instead, I’ll thread a hopeful “see you later”
Through the thousand words above
And look to the streetlight
That we’ll pretend is a sunrise for now
Because no matter what
For all those memories and people
That a goodbye could never hold
I’m under the same stars as you
