"Here Am I" by Anis Mojgani
we all wanted that high school sweetheart
we wanted to be young in the 50s with meatloaves
and sock hops
and lawns – lawns so perfect they looked like Clark Gable was kissing them…
we wanted to be thirteen and alive and meet a girl that was thirteen and alive
and walk with her past the grandstands, to sit and hold hands, with the sit and kiss, with the sit and sit, like it was something you would miss, but that…never was…
we once went to bed like between the bed sheets was a valley with dinosaurs still breathing
and how we capture these triceratops?
and brontosauruses?
but even they were opened up with the smoke that rose out of the homes and the corners that we once climbed through,
the streets and the footballs which we once threw,
the school desks upon which we once drew,
the windows that sat open through we once flew,
before the outside world of parking spaces and dead friends came flooding on in
and we forgot what we wanted
and we became what we become:
waitresses and bartenders,
city employees and temp positions,
we are junkies…and one kiss poems…and we cry the stars
as we write our scars onto dumpsters
and electric boxes
because the only thing that we can hear is our hearts
and the only ones listening are the streets
that the blood that breaths through the letters we leave
and we dream to rise ourselves up out of these burning buildings
but instead we get buried somewhere beneath
because I know my life is like some high school kid's notebook
a high school kid that shuffles back and forth between school and home
stacking the letters and the pictures too close for anyone outside of his own imagination to read
because it’s through the ink that his heart beats,
that his heart breaths
and we all just wanted to write these notes:
check if you like me
check if you don’t
check if you’ll date me
check if you won’t
because we all wanted the love songs to be true
and we did love dinosaurs once
and we wanted the stars to hold our hands,
to lick the teeth to fuck us,
but they ended up fucking us…up
so let your smile twist…
like my heart dancing precariously on the edge of my fingertips,
staining them like that same high school kid licking his thoughts,
using his sharpie tip writing:
“I was here / I was here, mothafucka… / And ain’t none of y’all can write that in the spot that I just wrote it in / I’m here mothafucka and we all here mothafucka and we all mothafuckas, mothafucka”
because every breath I give brings me a second closer to the day that my mother may die
because every breath I take takes me a second further from the moment she caught my father’s eye
because every word I carry is another stone to put into place in the foundation that I’m building
because the days can erase something that I never saw
what all of us wanted and what none of us got
what we all had and have and what we all forgot:
that we all wanted to be something
that we all became something
and it might not be the shit we once thought we’d be when we were kids
but something is still something
and, like some cats say, something is better than nothing
feet are smarter than an engine
and dreams are stronger than thighs
and questions are the only answers we need to have to know that we are alive as I am when I have the mind of a child,
asking, "why is 2 + 3 always equal to 5?"
"where do people go to when they die?"
"what made the beauty of the moon?
and the beauty of the sea?
did that beauty made you?
did that beauty make me?
will that make me something?
will I be something?
am I something?
And the answer comes:
already am,
always was,
and I still have time to be
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