Melancholy Soup

I used to write free-form poems a lot
I called them poems, but they were really just short sentences
They didn't rhyme or anything
Not that poems have to rhyme
They don't
Have to rhyme
Don't you just love poetry?
Does it make you think of lying in bed with a lover while he traces the small of your back with his fingertips?
Does it make you think of a simpler time?
Like a time when people listened to records and made their own clothes?
I took a poetry class once
At Eastern Michigan University
In a windowless room
There was a girl who always, always drank limeade
Limeade is just a little bit cooler than lemonade
Limeade is just a little bit more dangerous than lemonade
She had a blunt, severe haircut, with bangs that went straight across her forehead
She had a patchwork backpack
She never cried while reading her poems
Like a lot of the other kids did
But she would fight with the teacher
He hated her
And she hated him
I don't think she liked poetry
Me, I liked poetry
I still do
I have Dylan Thomas' Selected Poems 1934-1952 on my nightstand
That proves I like poetry
So fuck you if you think I'm lying about that
Right now I am listening to 4 + 20 by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on repeat
This song makes me want to sit by a bonfire
Not with a huge group of people, but alone
Or maybe me and one other person
My lover
Same guy who traces the small of my back with his fingertips while reading me Pablo Neruda
I want to go back to when I was nine
I remember the smell of burning leaves and the chill of the fall air on my little nose
I remember the feeling of being cold, but sweaty from riding bikes in the cold, and happy
So happy for no reason
If I rode my bike today, it wouldn't be for the joy of it
It would be for exercise
My mom used to make me a Banquet chicken pot pie for dinner almost every single night
I had chicken, my sister had beef
We lived in a little neighborhood
The kind of place you could let your dogs run without a leash and without supervision
Although, one of our dogs was mauled to death one night
I remember our kitchen phone
It was attached to the wall, like all phones were back then
So you had to sit in one spot to use it
I could look out the window and see my best friend's house
It was just down the hill from our house
I could see into her kitchen
It would be all lit up with warm yellow light
Sometimes when I dream, I am inside of her house
Sometimes when I read a book, I see her house as the character's house
Sometimes it's one of the houses I have lived in, but sometimes it's her house
She doesn't live there anymore
Neither do her parents
I don't live in my house anymore, either
And neither do my parents
That's because things change