Like a thrown out first draft in a book,
the young do not need to belong.
They just do or don’t.
And the dreams of the young are kept
in mildewed cardboard boxes full of merit
badges and plastic trophies from Little League.
Egg shell colored.
They screech like a leaking faucet.
The young are young because they
do not think about being young.
It doesn’t matter. In a way, they know
their boundaries better than elders do.
They also know what it means to roam
towards what the mind describes.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more.