the taste of stale light

it is easy

to spend your youth

getting high on potential

injecting sunshine

into your veins

so bright

you have to cover your eyes

almost perpetually

it is a little harder

but doable

to become a junkie

farther down the road

ever familiar

with the taste of that stale light

in the back of your throat

as your friends float quietly off

departing

one by one

from the safety of the dock

but the hardest thing

no doubt

is arriving too late

strung out

dangerously underweight

to reunion

after reunion

not quite clear

on how it got away from you

as the last of the sun bleeds

over the horizon

at the back of the parking lot

you’ve escaped to

for a cigarette

and a fix

but sunlight

no matter how weak

illuminates

with far more subtlety

than electricity

and you notice this

as you stare through the glass

smoke curling around your body

at the deceiving plumpness

of your peers

laughing

red-faced

hunched over their plates

gathered in return

to congratulate one another

on how well they navigated

those tricky waters

so of course

it is with a sublime irony

that the light reminds you

however faded

and strained

your relationship now

that it retains traces

of those fundamental flavours

that seduced you

all those years ago

providing relief, still,

not in the lie of its high

impossible

against the backdrop

of such a narrow culture

but in the truth

of its initial offering

of insight

it is a rare earth indeed

where any of us

use the elements

not to deceive

but as they were intended, originally

and as we all knew, clearly,

at one window or another

no matter how brief

when, and how,

we were supposed to.

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Image: Travel Drawn