You Were No Ground Level Limb

This was the second time I'd seen you, it was about eight years later. You cut across in front of me carrying six bags off an elevator. I knew in that instant you were the same thing I saw when I was a kid, though amidst the pause and shock of awkward remembrance, I was caught off guard by the lack of resemblance to what I had painted being young and willing to see past the bark to get to the best of everything. In your trail I heard some kind of symphonic sound through your headphones, resting on the ironic scarf dangled from your shoulders. Awkwardly skinny and doubled over. Folded together, bony arms holding a cellphone. So poignantly painting, "Connected, yet alone". I want to write about you and how you've changed, though it becomes increasingly apparent you must have been the same between then and now. You move just like you did. You still carry the confidence I admired as the kid who sat across from you in the mall. So lost, so small, your tortoise shell glasses make eyes so tall. What happened, then? You drip with pretension. Avoiding the public eye as if to get some attention? You were a novel in the eyes of a ten year old child now the whispers of theatre geeks and old books compiled. You notice me staring at you from a table across the room, while the last thing I want to do is be an enabler, it's too soon

You're prouder now, and show it by looking haunted. A show stopping performance of not caring, is that what you wanted? In the eyes of a child you were a model of difference, to be broken away like seeing kids who would hop a fence and leave some to one side, too weak to break authority. "So why not just dress differently to say that I'm me?" The answer is more clear to a ten year old mind than your arts degree turned retail clerk life can define. If you want to be something, let loose what's within, never forget that clothes simply end at the skin. You painted a picture for me once, vividly, though that was more imagination than anything. Your eyes like God's judgment looking up from a hole, seeking your professor's thoughts on what is or isn't a soul. You're the music player your left hand is holding. You were an eight year old memory that has tarnished, not golden. Like your presence felt years ago in this same room, the funny part is I almost turned out just like you

(You were painfully beautiful so long as I wanted you
Any time things went wrong, I told myself that wasn't true
You weren't the pine tree I climbed up so easily
You were the lack of even knowing my anatomy.)