Outcome

Shark eyed men watch reruns of baseball games
while a woman as young as their daughters
mixes cocktails with a shelf of limited resources.
They yell at the game like they haven’t already seen
its final outcome and are politely told to tone it down
or the door was right behind them if they couldn’t.

A student in the library cuts her finger on a page,
but lets it bleed so she can read a little longer.
She didn’t come here to be comfortable
but to search for something new
to make her stronger.

A handful of high school kids push
their skateboards down the sidewalk
cutting gaps between the late night
drinking crowds. They wear their music
on their sleeves so everyone could see it
and they play it through their speakers
over loud.

The losers break each other’s faces
through their lenses on the screen,
and every round they just get better
at the game. This simulation of a war
is all that they are searching for
beyond their dream that someday
more would know their names
apart from all the same.

There’s a bookshelf in the building
where the people passing through
would leave their spent texts
in a row for someone new.
It changes almost everyday,
in line up, but the oldest often
find themselves surprised
in ways that no one could imagine if they tried.