Most days, we skateboarded
like the sky was spilling out of our pockets—
our crusty teenaged hearts stuck in a cyclone
of a going nowhere town, of our wheels
knocking the sidewalk gaps to Wendy’s,
to high school, to the futures we’d walk away from.
We named ourselves,
tagged hoppers and auto racks,
but we never shot up the crooks
of our arms with hornets or pink dahlias.
On Saturday night, we waited for Bryan
to quit Long John Silver’s
by pinching crispies or crunchies
or whatever the fuck those fried-gold bits were
into our mouths; those questionable
unknowns we’d never fork
into our now thirty-five-year-old bodies
out of fear of descending
into a pile of broken candles.
There’s so much life you’ll never escape.
When I ask my father,
What was I like back then?
I feel myself disappear.
Bryce Berkowitz is the author of Bermuda Ferris Wheel, winner of the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award (forthcoming 2021). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, New Poetry from the Midwest, The Sewanee Review, Ninth Letter, Cimarron Review, and other publications. He teaches at Butler University. Instagram: @bryceberkowitz