Front Porch

If they made a movie about us
would there be a front porch?
I’ve never had one, is why I ask.
Well, I guess that’s not true,
Senior year there was a front porch,
though I only remember using it once,
played Codenames while waiting for the pizza.

Back then thought I knew all the right words,
the name of every instrument in every song,
which way the wind was blowing,
even how to dance. Who knows now
where all that confidence went;
probably under a couch cushion somewhere.
I’ve learned too much to think I know that much
(or at least I think I have.)

Not to confuse mistakes with martyrdom.
If I’ve built myself a fragile house
it’s out of walls of my own making,
and I’ll probably be the wolf, too.
Just that it’s lonesome, without the company
it turns out I never had, and just my thoughts
and this straw to chew on. It’s not a pretty house

what with all the teethmarks.
I’m gonna have to start wearing glasses more often,
I think, and I’m not looking forward
to being able to see everything all the time. Though—
and I know this isn’t a change you asked for,
really you never asked for a change at all,
not even (or especially not) the one you got—

but it would be nice, I think, to be able to see you
clearly, in that scene in the movie that, I assume,
takes place years from now, when one of us shows up
on the other’s front porch, just to say hi, maybe,
but then it’s a sunny day and there two comfy chairs
there on the porch, in between a stone statue of a frog
(that might be a toad) and a stone statue of a toad
(that might be a frog), and there’s music trickling out
from somewhere in the house, maybe whoever’s porch it is
was just doing some chores, maybe thinking about faces
they’d like to see and be seen by again, and maybe it’s perfect
timing, I was (or you were) looking for a break anyway, so we sit
on the front porch, just catching up, and the credits roll,
and I’m in the audience thinking that everything’s in its right place,
that there’s no wolf in sight, and anything can happen.