Bench Warmer

Few things deliver the dread
Of wearing out new shoes.
The subtle winds of fall
Emerge with the passion off a neglected younger sibling.
Passionate only in darkness, when it’s embers of September are still flaring.
October’s frights are a ways away.
November’s Frost is second only in chronology.
But wearing out shoes arrives slowly
Everyday a wrinkle appears. We wrinkle because of time, not use.
Even now. I can’t stand to look at them.
What if they wrinkled? No iron can soften it.

What a dilemma. I have to look my best for you. Yet my shoes wrinkle.
Although you have not offered an invitation I have accepted it.
The houses know, these bricks laugh. Those porch lights which flicker as I pass by cheer me on.
This chance encounter, is to me an event.
I purchase tickets and wait.
Except I have bought only the opportunity.
The perhaps, the chance, the might is all my language can afford.

The bench near the school
Ironically, the pinnacle of young love
Offers nothing. Two of its three supports are bent. Is it mocking me?
Consider, the chance glows more than any choice. A chance has an innocence.
A choice needs some courage, some time, some ability.
“Indecision is a decision”
These words were scribbled on my schools washroom. A thought hopefully confined there forever.
Rather a chance can be reflected, subverted and forgiven. A choice cannot.

This September chill cannot thaw my passions as easily as my chest.
My mother has already called me home.
My prose is as immature as I am.
Perhaps that ill fated childhood romance forgot me, but I remember it.
I have walked through Europe now, in a pastry shop.
Through the African jungles of a soccer field and the South American rainforest.
Those trees behind that local library are far too unruly.
This one hill alone rivals the Balkans.
Two streets, containing two traffic lights.
My sun and my moon, rightfully containing what is my world.
Since conception of such a notion, haven’t we awaited aliens? Some foreign adversary which invades Earth? Or perhaps a comrade to share in this mystery with. Regardless.
I await my extra as well. In my world of course.
She is far more elusive than any television alien.

How can I wait so long? What virtue is this but stupidity. It’s alright.
The passions of chance, of awaiting it, surpass the realization of choice.
Perhaps she will pass by, unaware that I have waited here for hours.
For the chance of saying a meager greeting. That my whole day is fulfilled in these two minutes, and my whole world in these two streets.
Some men feel hopeless, when confronted with the grandeur of the universe. I’m comforted rather.
God creates an unimaginably vast monstrosity, and still gifts me a world of my own.
Two lights greater than sun and moon, and one passion greater than any uncertainty.
But what makes this world? Is it my choices or hers? What gave these streets such position?

My father has seen me. Black vans offer little subtlety when he commands them.
He will undoubtedly berate me, my choices, and my virtues.
How can I explain to a man of years of choices, the pinnacle of chance?
I will die from pneumonia sitting on this very crooked bench, behind this library in the amazon rainforest.
I will return tomorrow. And the day after. I have commitments, but this is the greatest.
Everyday I will dedicate myself, to these two minutes of chance.
Everyday I will confine myself to these two streets. One is mine and one is hers.
Is it pathetic? In a way I’m confining myself to the whole world. It’s the very heights of ambition.

My shoes will wear out, before I can ever wear them.
This waiting will take my life or this Frost.
Is it waiting, if one is not waiting for sure? As in waiting for the chance to wait?
Will this cycle ever be completed?
The conquistadors were not explorers as great as me. For they were welcomed.
Even the grass beckons me home. The frost could not be more explicit. Although he was.
These houses cannot house secrets clearly. And these lights flicker only to envelop my hope momentarily. As if a moment won’t suffice.
This bench alone could sustain my whole life
Whatever years I’ve been given suffered within a few feet.
A chance, is an event worthy of such reverence.
This length is for her. Years have passed in minutes and she has not come. I’ll live to fight another day.
I, waiting here is the life god meant.
For a man like me, a life well spent.