'Bridge on the River Why', by Patrick Meeds
Hello music of the stars! Hello
sunburn! I am ready to shed my
inhibitions. I am ready to leave
my shoes under someone else’s bed
and haunt their house forever.
To leave notes in the margins
of all their pages and be the bookmark
that reminds them of where we left off.
Nothing says I am from the future
like a silver jumpsuit. Nothing says
kiss your butt good-bye like someone
walking quickly in the other direction.
Do you have your papers asked the man
at the train station? Do you have a funeral
suit? A comforting phrase all prepared
for when your eyes meet again after
all these years? I promise, you won’t
mind when I start trying to make the bed
while you’re still in it. You won’t mind
holding hands with a ghost or skipping
to the last page in this book to see how
it all turned out.
Patrick Meeds lives in Syracuse, NY and studies writing at the Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center. He has been previously published in Stone Canoe literary journal, the New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, the Atticus Review, Whiskey Island, Guernica, The Pinch, and Nine Mile Review among others.