Come Find Me

Wrote you a nameless note, said I love you.
Is that enough
for you to come find me?
Perfumed it with the scent of freshly picked
weeds and stale tears. I'm hiding,
will you one day soon come and find me?
Never sent you the letter. It'd said I'm lonely.
Crossed out very and always. Crossed out I. Then
Tore it. Burned it. Spread the ashes. I feel—
Won't you come and find me?
Was always good at hide-and-seek.
Once I hid myself so well even
I gave up trying to find me.
Like a shadow that has lost the sun,
a dream with the dreamer dead, an echo, a memory,
a place gone and a time past, a swamp—
if you are a river, flow this way sometime, find
me.

Forgotten Hideouts

We children hid among the rocks and oats.
We hid, behind the walls, our shameful parts.
Our frightened eyes we veiled with swell of tears,
Our hurts secured inside our padlocked throats.

And so it passed, the days and months and years.
But growing up so fast, we all forgot
The places where we hid our hopes, our hearts.
The pieces left: as rank as reefer butts.

The crumpled love letters and blood from cuts 
had dyed the grass beneath the lone bleachers.
We fled from all, but from ourselves much more,
Choosing to leave the ugly parts down there:

In bathroom stalls, behind the fastened doors,

In gyms, in Gale’s garage, never in class, 

But on the balding, moist, and yellowed grass

crowded with weeds.  Don't look, we're found nowhere.