CONSIDERATIONS

They tell me that youth is a virtue,
but when will it stop feeling like
a limitation on my lifestyle?
 
My parents married at twenty-two
and I can’t even afford
car insurance.
 
If I can stay up past 2am and
forget the names of all the people
I’ve fucked, then
 
maybe it’s not a confession I need to give,
but a moment of silence, of hesitation
and candle breath.
 
The same train passes the back campus
every night at 3:23am and I am
almost always awake to hear it.
 
I wonder if anybody else does
this same thing at night.
I wonder what keeps them awake.
 
He told me to write down anecdotes
and I thought of the time I woke up
on Salmon River.
 
I left the tent and walked to the lake shore.
She followed and then wanted to kiss me.
I could tell.
 
But she walked ahead and I took
photographs— maybe that was when
she should have known that it was the flowers
 
and the fog that I cared about.
Maybe even the driftwood.
But not the kissing.