Cityscape #9

It's been a while, but here's the almost but not really last poem of Cityscape. I've always had a fondness for paradoxes, and this poem is filled with them. The idea of being right next to a person and yet feeling as if they're miles away intrigues me. The detachment is all too common, and yet there seems to be no solution...

Wishbone Wishes

He stands
On plastic platform stages
That sit hundreds of people on weekend games.

Today, we’re the only bodies there.

The coral paint I’d smudged against his cheek
Is long gone,
But he smirked 
As if he hadn’t rubbed it off.

And he smirked,
Dropping another coin 
Into one of my piggy bank lockers
Labelled with his name in bold black letters,

The piggy bank lockers
That fuel the cyclist of my chest,
Pumping blood through the streets 
That branch out through my body. 

It pumps to by brain,
And I feel wings sprout from my plantation back,

But his butterfly wings
Flutter for someone else
In tighter jeans 
And higher food chains,

And I am the dragonfly pest,
The kind farmers perfume with pesticide,
The kind kids lock up in a bottle,
The kind that kids don’t punch air holes for.

He stands 
On his plastic platform stage
With the sun casting his shadow 
Across the grass stadium lake.

My eyes wink at the sun,
And its orange gaze propels my shadow 
Next to the one with bird’s nest hair

Our shadow selves swing with the clouds, 
Hands centimetres away,
The way maple leaves never seem 
To touch their neighbours.

I remember the chicken wishbone from last Easter,
And make my wish three months late,
But I’m still here,
As far from him 
As the sand and the sea.

Ever touching, 
Ever ebbing,
Never joining,
Only meeting.

And soon,
He’ll be standing 
On foreign platform stages,
His shadow swinging 
With another’s,

And I will believe 
That wishbone wishes come true,
When the sea strand no longer separates white from blue.