Gateway Drug

When I asked him over beers one night what the meaning of life was, my friend Alex replied we all think we're ugly, but we're not. And for once I agreed with him--how seductive, the idea that arbitrary cruelty might evaporate if everyone felt beautiful in their own skins. I went to talk to the local eleventh grade class about writing poetry, remembering over and over again how everyone is asymmetrical then, heads huge and …

…lunches and uncovered books fly, everything slams, and blinded we all get a good, fluorescent look at each other. I whisper, I want to devour you and the moment you climb inside the world stops yet we keep going, launched into oblivion. You are the ecstasy beyond the gateway, the path where something opens for good; when, cracked for just one moment we are whole, accepted, unjudged. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography** I wrote it. It's a poem