Judgement Day (For the Ones Who Lose)

In another life the car coming too fast
‘round the intersection in front of me looses its
war with gravity and tumbles us both to the
grave.
This scene happens daily behind by eyelids,
the transformation of unbelievable luck into reality.

Sometime last year in a bar in Glasgow
Some girl who isn’t me bums cigarettes
off strangers from the park.
that night we danced until the sun came up
and she asked me truths that I didn’t know how to tell,

like how she could play her cards just as well as I did.
I told her poker’s just luck
but our friend from up north with a gambling problem
could ramble for hours about all the ways you can win.

What he doesn’t mention
is the chance that you lose.
The chance that car hits black ice.

But she-
She doesn’t play straights.
She plays cars back to strangers houses
after long nights playing stranger pills
and kissing people
who aren’t me
with nothing but teeth.
Like I said,
It‘s the chance that you lose.

So when she asked me her question
I said that I play my cards like the only thing
that makes life worth living is art,
and if I am not looking into
the world for threads I could pick
apart and reassemble with my own two hands,
then it doesn‘t feel like living at all.

But we all play cards like
living isn‘t just the grey space
between the inception of friction
and the death of the universe.
on a slow night on Sauchiehall Street I saw
stars collapse behind my eyelids
and I saw the room like it was underwater,
and that was before she kissed candy into my mouth,
and told me that living was just the thing that kills you.

Judgement Day.
the day you win?
the day you lose?
the day your neurons lose their speed
and you slip into a zero sum game?
I asked her if she thought she could live without losing.
she just went out the next day.

_{c. m. s., 23, America.}