After the fun, it was
always exciting to wake
up and run outside,
collecting all the bits and butts
that lay strewn across the neighborhood concrete.
(Surely it was a way for
parents to have the little-
ones go out and clean up
after the teens on the block
destroyed vast stretches of blacktop and tar.)
I always liked surveying
the remains, the burnt-out
blisterings of a time well had,
and collecting them in plastic
bags that would wrap around my tiny wrist like a bracelet.
Years later, I would often
love surveying the remains
of a good night: the
destroyed
apartment; the body full of
burns and ache; the terrible things we do in the name of
fun.
And this, this afterthought,
was always something that
I thought was fun:
seeing what
was left, both still real yet dead,
the things we brush aside, considering them useless
altogether.
