Waffles and guns

You grow older.

You learn that the puzzle pieces to make a person aren’t as many as you thought back when you first opened the box. You come to recognise traits in the new people you meet; each one tearing another bit out of the posters of past heroes in your heart. You name a tone of voice after the first to use it; you refer to the particular twist of a smile by the name of he who first showed it to you. Scents become places; the sounds translate to years. You cry - because you, too, are built out of pieces duplicated and found in other people’s boxes, because one of those pieces is imprinted with the childhood ideas of snowflakes.

You will have no part in this conversation. You feel justified in that this eager voice, this oddly improper laugh, is a puzzle you solved once already, under a different name, in a different street. You consider the ease with which you lapse back into melancholy; you are inspired to smile as you close your eyes and face the April sun.

You remember, with a bit of an effort, that the snow, once it’s fallen, turns out yellowed and filthy.

1
I am bad with first lines. I leave those to you,
along with the protagonists’ names and
the scenes they choose to drink in.

From there I seize the paragraphs;
describe one character’s insufficiency,
the scattered punctuation of another.

My talent lies in narrating the endings.

2
Your mouth tastes of routine;
lukewarm drinks, another
glossary of chewed-up nouns.

Our language is effortless -
You choose the vocabulary,
inflections and syntax,

while I wait for you to shut up.