The Perplexities of Parallelism

I let so many years get the best of us, so many scores of days and months,

that even that song we danced slowly to once,

was merely an echo at the back end of a corridor I hadn't walked in ages.

I spent all these years after the turn of the century

worrying about what a bad place this would be to raise a kid,

with thoughts of the expiration date of screen doors,

and welcome mats meaning what they say.

I worried far too much and far too long about wasted time,

so much so, that I didn't even think to say that it's things like this

that take seven minutes off your life here and there.

I was always wanting to be born of something intrinsically better than all of this,

was always wanting to be sitting pretty in the flippancy of flappers.

But there was no such thing as flippancy,

without its brethren confidante,

tragedy---