This is Not About Growing Up.

A Poem by V.B.

Steal everything.

my hometown didn't have a beach.

the veil of song lyrics
between me and my melancholy
is paper thin and miles long.
all the poems i write on it
come out sounding like karaoke.
all the poems it writes on me
come out sounding wrong.

only half of it is cryptomnesia.
the rest is shameless.

i can keep up the matter-of-fact
until the last liar on earth
asks me politely to shut the hell up.
maybe by then i'll have recaptured a moment
well enough to justify my chokehold on its memory.

no one has ever seen my soul,

though i'm no more deliberately opaque than clever.
just look at me;
i couldn't even put these words in the right order.
i'm not wearing any clothes,
and it cannot be easy to believe
that my cracks are there by design.

i've never even lived by the ocean.