By Alex Wright
Front lawn living rooms
Porch fires
Ash and astro turf
A deposit burned for conversation’s sake
Fake accents at after parties
Those actors may place our faces but
They’ll never know our names
The way my stories are stitched with all of yours
I still crave more
I remember the way I felt the day I left
Years bawling up inside my chest
Sadness and relief
Joy divided by disbelief
That somehow I had made it through
That I’d found something true at all
Worth cannonballing into
Leaving the life I knew in the rearview
Mirrors show our aging
Some things just stay the same
Like chain smoked god-talks
Bottle rocket goodbyes
Ugly Houses hits
The orange lantern lit for all of Wells to see
New year’s toasts in New York City
In some strangers’ loft apartment
Before they came home and made us leave
So once again we took
To those cold but steady streets
Not everything was golden
That taught us that we are
Now that we’ve gotten older
I cherish every scar
Of our strung out salad days
Long-lived glory nights
When we all felt alive
Time was on our side
There was nowhere else to be
But exactly where we were
Mixed up and confused
With nothing left to lose
Everything to gain
ALEX WRIGHT CONTAINS MULTITUDES 