[oats]

Have you ever had to sacrifice for something you cared for?
Or was it someone?
Either way you know exactly what it's like to be airborne
One second you're in heaven, breathing skies as you breeze through
The next one you're stressing about the sidewalks beneath you
Reminiscing - every step of your modest turf
The cracks in the concrete meandering to blooming plots of dirt
Trodden worth, worn with footprints the past devoured
But from up here, it's easy to confuse the cracks for flowers...

After hours spent in her bedroom as dawn broke
My cue to exit: ghoulish echoes upstairs when her mom spoke
I'm ghost - the only traces were dust clouds unsettled by her window
Some moisture on her sleepy cheek and an impression on her pillow
remembering the still glow of the yawning sun above the palm trees
Crisp country air free falling from the mountains to a calm breeze
By sunrise, clouds winked "don't worry, her parents aren't on to us"
But looking back, perhaps those clouds were much more ominous

Fast forward 6 months - frantic phone calls across the pacific
thinking of what to tell her while I'm pawing off lipstick
she picked up the phone, silent…paused for a minute
and cried "you said you would wait for my call and you missed it-
we were perfect till you left for college, admit it"
But our problems always existed...
Just modestly hidden, a collage of unconscious incisions
recalled them to be - obviously - chalked up to distance

one of us stayed quiet, the other didn't bother to listen
but looking back, who did what becomes a foggy admission
cause and elision: the economic description of the heart's wrong definition
that nobody longs for it's fission -
so silence is stubborn for us to amend the eulogy sunk in;
the "truth" is debunked when we admit love is just an independent utility function
she paid rent to the crudest assumption that left her reeling in disgrace
when I revealed it to her face that she had been replaced - by a bunch of meaningless mistakes...

people can be changed by paying homage to the firmaments
nostalgia - what discouragement!
ignoring what's in front of me as solace from the permanence
call it what you're burdened with, the fractures wandering below you/
behind you. whatever they may be, just call it what they show you
all those cracks in the sidewalk, holes to make whole again
how many apologies does it take to pave over them?
though I wonder - if those cracks exist as regrets that I forgot her
will new ones emerge if I forget that I forgot her?

Lessons I've been taught from every hour consumed -
Perhaps the cracks are just room for roots so the flowers can bloom