Tyrel Kessinger

Cucumber

I wanna be cool til I die.Cool with everything.Cool with my neighbors.

Cool with my mail carrier,my Uber drivers.I wanna be cool

with theearth and sky,with the wind.With all the trees that I wish

I knew the name of.With the bone-colored moon.I wanna be cool

with the man bagging my grocerieseven if he does it poorly and crushes

my bread.I wanna be cool with someone famous.I wanna be cool

with quantum physicswhich have so far made the best argument

for just how ridiculouseverything is.I wanna be cool

with every dog I see,every turtle,every snake, every naked mole rat.

With all the lost socks and the ghosts of my regrets.I wanna be cool

with the sharp edgesof dangerous things but I don’t

want to have to maketheir acquaintance, first.I wanna be cool

with the starsthat salt the night sky.Of course some things

don’t wanna be cool with me.Time, for example.I wanna be cool

with time but everyone knowstime is only cool with the future

and I am always inthe past.Look,I wanna be so cool

it hurts.I wanna be cooltil it doesn’thurt anymore.

About the Author

Tyrel Kessinger is a “writer” and a stay-at-home dad of two wild animal-like things. Some of his work can be found at tyrelkessinger.wordpress.com. He can also be found tweeting a lot of non-viral tweets @KessingerTyrel.