Band Boy
Yeah, he needs to go on stage, but he needs me in the green room, too. Sucking out his bones, picking my teeth with his shyness. He reaches for his notepad to say something. I set it on fire just to trace, with my fingers, the wires of smoke. He’s orphaned by words never written and melodies unfinished. Clueless, but he’s oh-so-pretty when he’s flying into that rock ‘n’ roll mirror nose first, like a plane that never found its way – on the ocean floor – home to all the captains’ bones that never made it back okay. He’s a phone call from a hated relative when he opens up his lips, when he touches me back, it’s something made of silver; he only says he loves me if I’m stuck inside a song that sucks, but I’ll sing along loudly just to hear myself lie. Hoarding compliments from fortune cookies; his love is like sitting in rooms with no chairs. He thinks he’s clever when he muses– If all our eyes are cameras / then we’re always taking pictures– but he just doesn’t know. It’s rude to call yourself an old soul. So, I leave him in that dream: the one where he’s so drunk, he can’t stand on his own two feet, and I’m haunted by the notes I danced along his collarbones.
