hula hoop picnic party

where have you been? out running your life as if i didn't even exist. making plans and falling in love with someone else. i suspect. i knew it, i knew you were in love with someone else. didn't matter then, doesn't matter now. i remember you back then, as you were, much younger with thoughts of who you were convinced you were gonna become. we all had those thoughts, but look at us now. it ain't nothing like what you or i thought it would be. your hair changed with the wind back then and day to day your ambition changed and shifted and moved as if it was fluid. but now sand has moved through the glass and here we are, you and me. us. it's not the same as before, when i was throwing things in anger out in the middle of oregon when things weren't quite going my way. and tonight as you took my hand, as we ate dinner, i would never have thought, back then, that i would welcome that from you. ever. but now, i wait for it again. waiting. back then, in oregon, in california, in the middle of montana, i longed to be a better man, the one i may be now. gone, maybe now, are the boyish good looks replaced with some sort of wisdom and a less skewed perspective - i don't know i think it may be the pot talking now but i do know this...i'm giving it a kick at the proverbial can, i am. i know some say i'm a wreck and a shell of a man that should be shit canned and throw for scrap but i have made my peace with myself and know as i hold my hand in front of my face i'm made for one more round. it's in me. i have run my hands along the ground for the last time - the blood crusted there, i have made peace with the dark part of my heart. i am less wild. less than in my days that saw me in and out of drunk tanks, in the back of squad cars and at the wheel of cars i had run into the ditch on my way home from the bar.
i am not that man. but i know that man. well. i'm ready to make a proclamation, of sorts. in churches i have never seen the inside of. i'm ready to say i do, to something. with a clean shave. a washed face. i can't tell you who you are now, or who i really am now, but i know i'm ready to put myself to the test. i'm drunk with hope and faith and can't go to sleep at night without thinking of you.
the bus passes here twice a day with people on it going somewhere else. heres' not the place they wanna be. but i'm hoping one day.