Afforded

She breaks a wine bottle against the corner
of the post office that they are walking past
that night after the party. Her friends are adjusting
their dresses by the bushes that ring with music
from the legs of all the grasshoppers.

A wolf wanders into an abandoned town
where a statue of a revolutionary
is in pieces on Main Street and the super market
is all shot up with holes.
It corners a duck in the city park against
a gazebo that was picked out from a catalog
and bites its head off while it dreams about
the mountains it is trying to get back to.

Kids with pocket change mix to the sodas at the corner store
fountain and pay extra so the clerk will give them cigarettes.
They share one while they wait for it to get darker,
and they can start to make the town regret forgetting
all the reasons that they lie.

The road on the outskirts leading in was always quiet,
and a stranger walked along it toward the lights
that formed the windows of the buildings.
He used to be afraid of all the distance that he traveled
and felt the burdens of the journey weigh him down.
Things only changed when he decided that his sadness was a sword,
and even though it was unpleasant, it was beautiful
when putting up a fight.