Barefoot

I used to walk barefoot everywhere I went,
callouses my only armor,
warm asphalt singing to my soles.
No money, no bed,
just the sweet stink of freedom and cigarettes.
Fresh from a house that sanded me silent,
that tried bruising my head into believing
obedience was love.

Homeless, but the small-town kind of homeless.
Where every other person you pass knows your mom,
and empty parking lots with friends were the only sermons we attended.
Parks became living room carpets,
friends’ couches became temporary homes,
everyone knew and pretended not to know that I had no home.

It was the millennial anti-hipster gospel:
Rimbaud in my back pocket,
Pink Floyd bleeding through cracked earbuds,
scribbling half-poems on receipts and rolling papers
like some saint of the gas station night shift
only to burn them before the dawn.
These were the only rituals that mattered to me anymore.

Hungry, but not upset about it.
I thought vagabond meant eternal youth,
that growing up was a disease only the fearful caught.
I thought the future was optional.
But addiction had already lit its cigarette,
riding in the backseat behind me,
smirking because it knew the future all too well.

Still, I walked barefoot everywhere,
the night pressed down like a loving hand,
the stars clapped with pity.
I was free, I was nothing,
I was alive in the way only the condemned are alive.
Grinning through the ache,
ready to swallow the whole goddamn decade
like a cheap beer in the movie theater parking lot before the show.