A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

I know what I think, but people don’t want you to say what you think. They want you to say what they think. And knowing what that is isn’t easy.

lunch is basically soft-core-porn-time.

one is evil, only unhappy, and unhappiness festers inside like a sore.

Because when you’re between two shores and no one can see you, you don’t really exist at all.

basically implying that seeing a guy’s junk is equivalent to seeing a naked chimp at the zoo.

Like I’m sitting at the bottom of a pool, listening underwater to people living up above.

Talking is a talent; he probably doesn’t realize it, but it is.

In that split second maybe time slows down, and he can see all

the invisible places. And maybe, sometimes, he sees them.

I used to think struggle was what aged you, but if that were the case, Julian should’ve been a hundred years old. Now I wonder if the opposite is true. Maybe instead of accelerating your age, pain won’t let you grow.

It seems unfair, the way unhappiness flows out of a person, just to ricochet.

Hate ricochets, but kindness does too.

People I love will be watching me. Their eyes like safety nets, I can’t fall.

Superheroes aren’t real, and even if they are, they come too late.

You don’t really know people when your back is turned.

It’s as if the lights strung through the trees have moved to float above us. Beautiful and too many to see all at once. Ten million stars.