White sneakers
highlighter marks all over
green
yellow
orange …
even pink
stepped over that threshold
between the dumb peace and the elite war.

Glasses hung over the bridge of his nose
in a fashion
that almost looked nerdy
but not quite on him,
like haute couture
doesn't look quite ridiculous on supermodels
on the catwalk.

I knew him.

“First word, hiatus – what do you say
when a man comes in and kills you all?”

I laughed
heartily, with my heart a few seats over.

Weeks;
months
the beat was off by one.
I dreamt at the most unusual times
about rendezvous with transparent phantoms
singing through the chinks of my walls.

There was happiness to be enjoyed
sorrow to be endured
as tears flooded the banks of my eyes
causing $4.99 damage and
turning my face into a piece of broken pottery,
a china doll
dropped on the floor.

“Try to feel something and be genuine. But lie
for the rest of the time …
That's the concept of essay examples.”
I laughed, again, wondering,
what if the genuine and the fake are the same?

When the tip of my
Japanese 0.1 mm ballpoint pen
bled a black sea,
I remembered,
remembered so well where I met him,
a stranger with a million-dollar voice,
a stranger who
shot my heart with the Cupid's bow
but never returned to claim his love
when the world was still genuine.