Lonely Parades by Yash Seyedbagheri

faces parade up and down the streets on Fridays
flaunting faults
and amplifying them with cheerful grins
stories rise, bad grades, stealing mannequins in their youth,
endearing crookedness marches
in halter tops and backwards caps
I don’t know them, looking out
for they never look to a lit window
so far up

they’re absorbed in laughter, like
geese flocking, hand in hand
sharing space, doing cartwheels on
the sidewalk and laughing into the air
but never looking up
because they might look down from childhood
into lonely hearts, the dusty spaces with no photos
it might be two years
a year into the future, or is it a week?

so they retreat, retreat,
retreat into jukeboxes that pulsate purple and parties
addresses I don’t know
or ones where their eyes call me freak
if I deign to stare
and take it all in
and the worst thing is
they can’t utter the word
not one word

once, I used to retreat into bars
by railroad tracks, where trains could conceivably run me over
while listening to the Lebowski soundtrack
and I laughed along with the others, cohorts, they called them
a rehearsed laugh, that dissolved
while they talked in foreign tongues
of friends that they possessed and people
they knew and apartment parties
where everyone else was invited.

I used to look up to the skies, nonetheless,
wait for emails and phantom invitations
the casual mentions
of things more intimate than collective beer gatherings
but maybe my invite got lost among the marchers
in a stalled connection
a draft never sent, a computer humming
humming empty
I hope I’m cynical, but I’ve looked down

there’ll be a new bunch of marchers next year
I hope they look up
just once
wear a smile, give a nod,
while I try to convey
the years to come
and they call out
a fleeting word, offer a smile
and look down with me

Short bio to appear on site: Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. A native of Idaho, Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, and Ariel Chart, among others. 

Twitter: @dudesosad

“Evening Express” by Yash Seyedbagheri