Up There this one goes out to anyone that’s ever made me feel I wasn’t enough or felt they were too good & drifted away I remember we fucked in the auditorium your idea & how carnal & playful you were wore a skirt and it hurt but I’ll admit I wasn’t ready here’s to the loves that didn’t last couldn’t last it’s all in the past now but I still daydream time to time Acan Glaske big border you know what that means government shutdowns partisan bickering sniveling banter back and forth we go the first settlers built walls around their encampments wanted to keep the threats out the Lakota the Apache the Comanche they lived on the open range in communion with nature they didn’t need Facebook to tell their stories they didn’t need Twitter to share their opinions smallpox and diphtheria did that unfair trades did that white colonialism Andrew Jackson trips to the White House meant nothing we shouldn’t be here but we are they should have built a wall Blonde the bride is a former love of mine she’s tall fair-skinned & blonde blonde like the color of summer wheat blonde that falls down the center of her back like a rope I’ve never stopped climbing she wears glasses as big as her face that lift ever so slightly when she smiles she talks with her hands she likes wearing pants & quotes Barthes there are acrobats at this wedding three-course meals & a vow of love for all time I watch my father cry for the first time since his mother died on Christmas Eve it’s as if I was there as if I never left California but the dream is the same every time & when I wake it’s nothing but a dream a sweet dream a bad dream that keeps recurring
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Chad W. Lutz is a non-binary writer born in Akron, Ohio, in 1986 and raised in the neighboring suburb of Stow. They graduated from Kent State University with their BA in English in 2008 and from Mills College in Oakland, California, with their MFA in Creative Writing in 2018. Their first book, For the Time Being, is currently available through J. New Books. You can read Chad’s previous work on The Fictional Café here.
