"The Same"

That public chalkboard there, tacked to the ratty sallow planks of that vacant shop, it got Tommy all excited. She was taken there after the quick lunch at Popeyes up Divis, she sure was famished and could eat anything. She wrote her name first and moved aside for Tommy to write his with a lump of blue chalk from the wire basket. He bolded his name under the huge D I C K S another wandering dissident scribbled in red. They tied the names together with a +.

Tommy's decent now. Works by the docks for an espresso machine packer near the West Oakland tracks. Pays the $925 for his place off of I-680, and makes sure the pantry's stalked with Yerba Matte for the sensitive roommates. He's got his third flimsy notepad from the 99 cent place to keep him company on his commute to West Oakland. When he reaches that destination he wonders if it's the real thing. If he should still keep onward until the City.

He's writing nonstop those messy love letters stapled in the red ink to the yellow paper, words she would never know and wouldn't understand now. Some days Tommy sits in the car thinking he should go on. He's decent, but he doesn't understand himself.

That public chalkboard still there, tacked to the ratty sallow planks of that decay, Tommy doesn't understand why he shouldn't go forth and see it again. Has she seen it? Did they fade?

Tommy's decent now.

She'd not understand now.

And what it means to stay the same now, seeing if the names of that golden past still in dust, still + hand in hand? Decent Tommy, these things do you understand?