Mid winter Depression

Tired and with
a strong case of heartburn;
these are the signs of the times
that I'm not
eighteen anymore nor
is it the mid nineties.
Now, when people talk about
the nineties
(the time I came to age)
they say "back in the nineties."
To my son and daughter
they belong in a book,
or more appropriately now
the web.
I managed to be very good
at getting rid of people
and playing the victim for it.
I became
like that kid in second grade
whose name I forgot.

The most indelible image I still have
was from February 1994.
I don't know why I remember it as much as I do
as at the time it held no special significance.
Joe Zaccaria, Kat Andersen, and I were waiting at the corner of West 210th
and Center Ridge.
Right by Westgate Mall,
(which no longer exists, therein too lies melancholy.)
waiting for the #53 to take us to Great Northern,
to Pizzeria Uno where I worked.
For some reason to the snow,
and the conversation stick in my mind
though I don't remember a thing we said.
Fifteen years later, though
I remember the impression.

We ate Pizza Skins,
we looked in stores and couldn't afford
the merchandise.
We were young
and thought ourselves wise,
like how the young do.
I can take this away:
nobody is truly wise at the time he thinks it,
only in the passing;
in the experience and the heartbreak.
What a cruel lesson, that.
How we should grow,
not through the now
but through the broken relationships,
the betrayals
and the shaken nerves.