Quarter Life

Marmalade skies, you, and a backdrop of cornrow mazes.
This delta river might as well swell to overtake us.
Pills, drills and thrills is the life you built for us.
Repetition, long winded and sure throated.
My insides feel bloated.

When we were so much younger we sought out pumpkin patches and clung to traditions
 too scared to let adulthood take us.
Scared to see what depth a hollow holiday might carry for us.
We spent the rest of our college years
Struggling to find meaning
Then once meaning was evaded we walked into life with only an inclining of feeling jaded.

Filming bars at early morning twilight.
Talking to bartenders
Making friends with one eyed patrons.

There’s a shift between naive reality and reality itself.
Like when we realized the truck drivers would end their day like anyone else,
with a glass of whiskey and a smoke.
Except their day ended at 4 in the morning
After driving all night
And we all wondered why they are so susceptible to stroke.

It’s a lonely road some would say.
Others would tell stories of how they’d pass the time
One finger flicking ash away.
We stood on the corner then, nothing but flat land around us.
We stomped in the sewer drain and the flooding nearly drown us.

Parked cars and piled leaves.
Do you remember when he grabbed for me?
As if this weight didn’t carry bad memory.
We came here to expand our reality.