- Keith Banner
There's No Name for This Feeling
there's no name
for this feeling
the one when
you are little
and you meet a kid
at the mall
or maybe at the hospital
at church
the grocery store?
not at school though
where you have to see
them every day
but isolated
a one-time deal
i'm gonna go with
mall
when i was little
like 8
and that emotion
of which i write
happened to me
blossomed
inside
a little play area
with concrete
turtles
a concrete
hippo
surrounded by wool-
worth's lights
beyond a wrought-iron fence
and this boy
and me talked
about nothing
played like nothing
my mom somewhere else
in the mall
throughout that night
being me
being no one else
and talking about
nothing but what we were doing
this kid and me
i think he was blonde
my same age
talkative but so was i
we probably lied
about shit
i don't know
inside the mall
like that surrounded by muzak
and people everywhere
but then the lights start blinking
time to go home
and my mom's nowhere to be found
that fear of not
having a place to return to
and that kid with his mom
leaving, me
pretending to know where my mom is
proudly letting that kid and his mom go
not even crying
but watching him
and his mom walking away
to some form of infinite safety
comfort
and love
me wanting to attach myself to them
to that kid and his mom
both people I won't ever know again
this intensity
this rush of not knowing
but feeling it all so deeply
that all of a sudden
the world is so
huge it can't fit into my sea-shell of a head
and it takes everything
not to run after them
that kid and his mom
begging for them to
take me with them
wherever they are going
you ever feel anything
like that?
