not a seagull

I am not a seagull.  

They catch at my past through the metal and glass of my car, and they tease me.

They are a group, neither family nor strangers.  Friendship is the intimacy of mutual distance,

Especially while flying.

They tease me from the air. I roll across hard slabs, on a path, for a path, that is delineated for a basic decency that strangers can't manage on their own.  I hover over a bridge and am framed by alarms, commutes, crowds, and commitments.  I am not a seagull.

And they remind me of what I’m not as they destroy my structure simply by being above and with their simple minds never caring to look down.

I want to be a seagull.

I remember their freedom.  You stole it from me, gracefully. With love.  You couldn’t see this far.  I tried.  We wanted to be seagulls, the kind that fly separately in tandem. 

We are weeping rocks.  In lines.

The line is time, and we walk it, circus style.

And our tears make us believe that we have a choice, a chance,

And our stomachs juggle the two types and call it balance:

Claim the funny whole or part-by-part hold the mean truth.

Seagulls make sense. 

Seagulls don’t care to make anything and don’t know sense. 

And all the while we focus one way and fall the other,

Or we keep our vision cool and though soul may soar then, love blurs. 

I am not a seagull.

But I have been one.  Above me, they pull my past back into line of sight and I must run it over:  I have soared with that freedom before, and I have done it with a human love, and no one can dance both sides for long. 

Because, if another hanging hand by luck or chance or fate takes stillness with our hormonal skin,

Then happiness lives in fantasy seconds and this timeline will never mark anything but ticks in history. 

You are not a seagull.

I couldn’t leave you thoughtless and free while you still had my wings. 

I believe, I took you back down, without grace.

And I lost both our wings.