After the Kiss

by Terra Elan McVoy

know this song.

  Seeing me

  Nadia stops:

  comes around the counter

  popping her hips.

  She screams the lyrics for me,

  grabs my mop arm and

  we start to swing.

  Denver comes jumping

  up and down from the kitchen

  and we make a circle

  one-two-three-and-the-mop

  a goofy ring-around-the-rosy all the way down

  to the sudsy floor,

  both of them shouting dirty lyrics and laughing

  until the song is over

  until it’s time to get back up.

  I finish my mopping, head to the bathrooms

  with my rubber gloves.

  Nadia’s cleaning

  the cake cooler now.

  Denver will go disinfect

  the rest of the kitchen

  while Nadia counts the money,

  and we lock up.

  We’ll go to our own houses,

  back to our own lives.

  But on the sidewalk, saying good-bye, our faces are

  beaming

  —none of us sure

  what happened in there, but

  all of us obviously

  insanely glad.

  Surprise Flare

  Just as I slide

  in between the cold sheets, nestle

  my clean, wet head onto a pile of down,

  a quick thought flashes

  across the back of my eyelids, an image so bright

  and sudden

  I almost gasp.

  It is me kissing

  a mouth that’s not Alec’s.

  Another hand skimming my collarbone,

  someone else’s legs—Denver’s—

  wrapping around mine.

  It is a comet of a thought:

  fast and fleeting,

  bright but brief,

  and leaving a burning hot trail behind.

  TGIF

  Sliding into clean jeans,

  a fresh turtleneck,

  and having the clarity

  —without coffee—

  for a little mascara,

  I look at the mirror and realize

  it is Friday again.

  Somehow

  I not only know

  what day it is, but also

  I have reached

  the end of another week without him,

  with the wherewithal

  for clean clothes

  and a hairbrush.

  Two weeks ago I could barely crawl

  through the clouds of despair

  clawing at my body,

  making it hard to breathe—

  no sleep

  little food

  nothing but pain.

  Impossible

  to stop crying

  —impossible

  to even take a shower.

  But today my eyes are clear and

  I care about my socks.

  I’ve been

  eating breakfast

  for the last two days,

  and my stomach growls now,

  waiting for me to catch up.

  It’s a small triumph,

  and there’s farther to go,

  but as I glance in the mirror

  one more time

  I see myself,

  give myself

  a tiny smile.

  Two Girls at Loose Ends

  It’s Friday night, Mom says,

  home from her hospital shift,

  seeing me

  on the couch,

  glaring at an issue of Poets & Writers I’m not enjoying.

  What’re you doing tonight? she merrily wants to know.

  When I shrug

  —nothing—

  suddenly the world tilts:

  we are

  calling Fellini’s,

  in the car to the video store,

  come home with

  her favorites—You’ve Got Mail,

  a feta-onion-spinach pie,

  a carton of Milk Duds, and

  another movie with Cate Blanchett.

  We are

  quilt-pillows-pajamas-pizza pile

  on the sofa together with our knees touching.

  She is

  a woman of delight I haven’t seen in a while. I am

  a relaxing version of myself

  I haven’t seen either.

  Camille

  empty

  quick, without thinking about it too much, list all the things that are empty: coffee cups in the sink; a pair of dirty jeans on the floor; lockers on the last day of school; baby bottles sucked dry and tossed out of high chairs; playgrounds on rainy days; movie theaters at 8 a.m.; photo frames with broken glass; libraries after a fire; hands with no one to hold them; a dead woman’s jewelry box; your mind when the sun is just right and the music is good and you’ve just sucked the last bite of cake from your fork; a car parked in an alleyway next to a jazz club, where everyone inside is smoky with sweat; taxis with off-duty lights; a long road in the middle of the texas desert; the sky of stars in space; the beach in winter; a stranger’s eyes on the bus; both your inbox and your mailbox, of any message you might want to receive, save this—two lines from the catcher, cryptic and confusing, and yet maybe a comfort—seeing you is too much. what about saturday?

  the coffeecounter girl

  —the one who’s your age, the one you like seeing here because you know, like you, she doesn’t quite fit in—has an anger in her throat, but her laugh comes out like a ribbon from her sometimes—the way she guffaws at the barista and can barely contain her crush behind her hand whenever that scruffy, impish college boy with the bandana for hair comes out of the kitchen, how she asks you every time how your day was, her smile a kind of bright that makes you want to squint. but when you are watching her and no one else is, she is placid and calm as a landscape painting, enjoys the sliding of warm yeasty things from racks to trays and from trays onto plates or into bags. her favorite is the heft of a muffin in her hand just before she squeezes it. she seeks the peaceful yawn of doughnuts, smiles at the hissful blissful steam of new coffee brewing. there is a buzz around her: the real baristas aswirl in their espresso steam, the children fingering the organic chocolates on display, the post-grads hunched in line, waiting for her itching for their coffee and their laptops, the cash register drawer with its merry bell. in all this her eyebrows are smooth and pleased even if her mouth is always turned down around the thing she still somehow can’t bring herself to say.

  yeah, that

  what about saturday? you decide to sit on it, and don’t write him back.

  the amateurs

  they took you in so fast you almost forgot for a while you weren’t one of them, but now watching your friends get all weepy over plans for their last spring break you find yourself squarely outside them all again. willow’s family has a house and everyone goes; apparently, they’ve gone every year—have gone since middle school—and now the volume rises as they start talking on top of each other, telling tales of old times, doing the remember when thing you’d already like to forget. this is their last year, this time will be the last time and even though it is still weeks away, it is apparently time to go shopping for new swimsuits and this is what’s got them all wet. you come with us they plead to you, putting their hands on your knees and insisting how nice it will make things, your first time being their last, how you’re already one of them, how it wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t there. you shake your head and smile sadly and say something about family, something about vacation your dad never gets to take. you will not go with them—will not really go anywhere—but at least you will not have to watch them flounder and fumble, wet-eyed and weak, first-timers at detachment. at saying good-bye.

  countryshow

  mom’s moved on to concerts now, and tonight it is neko case at a place called the tabernacle: this old genteel lady of a theater with a chandelier bigger than a
mack truck hanging over the center, and balconies draped across its back like strings of ivoried pearls. right away upon walking in your wretched traitor heart knows that boy in chicago would love it, would love the gentlemanly bathrooms and the dowager lounges on every floor. your seats are high enough to see everything but not so high you will miss anything, and when that scrawny gal clomps onstage and takes her guitar in her fist you could swear you feel his hand in yours. you won’t linger because it simply can’t be said well enough how that lonelysadtrue voice moves straight from her ruby mouth to around your heart and squeezes so hard you feel your knees buckle. but lucky your mom is there by your side, her wide-eyed smile next to you, turning its beams on you, refusing to let you shrink. refusing to leave you alone.

  crossroad

  after that whole baseball fiasco—and the weirdo nonmessage message you both know you didn’t respond to—you’re certain tonight’s lake house deal will not be a date. still, you do know the catcher will be there. and he knows you will be there. and you both know that right now you are probably getting ready to be there, knowing the other one will be there. what is he practicing to say to you and what are you (really) practicing to say back? what is “too much”? and how much? and what kind? you don’t like to cross these kinds of uncertain bridges—drawbridges that may not close once they’re opened. this is all making you too itchy and you need a new route. go a new way, just get away, or at least don’t head his way. and yet—and yet—he was definitely walking across the little bridge you’d built, he was definitely coming toward you from the other side, trying to span something. at least, it really seemed like that. and maybe still does—maybe he’s still trying to. so now you don’t know what you’re doing and you definitely don’t know what to wear. the jeans worked before but follow this thought all the way and be honest: do you really want to be kissed again? really? or ignored and dissed? either one could happen and anyway that party is always full of so many other people you could much more easily not be attached to. why even think in this stupid direction? (seeing you is too much.) remember too there are three unanswered postcards on your dresser—a whole other bridge made of toothpicks and dried roses that you’re not even sure is standing any more, since you’ve only stared into its memory, your heart thumping like mad. so now look at yourself and make a decision, because otherwise you’re just some dumb girl halfway on two shores with no way to cross back over to her own island, just some girl standing in front of the mirror—some lost girl with no map—nothing but a slutty camisole in her hand.

  impossible

  it’s not that you’re hurt, and you’re definitely not sad. what you are is pissed. because you are careful. you are choosy. you are a girl with a metal detector in a minefield. you are the one testing for trip wires. you do not put your foot down unless you know what’s underneath. and so now this is just all too mortifying to really stand. it’s not like you wanted him to be your boyfriend. it’s not like you went after him. you’d just chatted by the bonfire! and then he was spouting haiku and revealing his soul and grabbing you on the deck. you are not the one who started this—you were going to end it first, right then, tonight. it should be him burning with humiliation now—who left the party early—not you. it should have been you who said i’m sorry i can’t, not him. that he beat you to it is just maddening. that you didn’t see it coming is even worse. that all you said to him was i think we need to talk, and then got that for a response makes the veins stand out on your forehead. you weren’t going to say you loved him, didn’t want to swap promise rings, wear his letter jacket. you weren’t the one who attacked him in front of everyone, aren’t the one who should be here alone on a saturday night back at home remembering his cold face looking at you like he was someone you didn’t know at all—someone else you’d never met, never had the chance to size up.

  even more impossible

  and then—and then!—as you’re trying to bolt, trying to move as fast as you can out of the room and then out of the house and into your car and out of the neighborhood and maybe even out of the county for a little while—still so shocked and pissed and horrified by the catcher’s stupid pathetic apology—like he was dumping you!—you don’t really understand what’s happening. because you’re going through the dining room, pushing past who-gives-a-crap and no-one-cares when all of a sudden a pale clawed freckled hand is seizing you by the arm and grabbing tight. you think for a minute it might be the catcher trying to explain but no this hand is far too skinny and it’s attached to a white scrawny arm and above it is a harpy face you’ve never paid attention to before, eyes full of hate that know all too well who you are. you can’t believe her grip but more you can’t believe the utter venom in her face, which makes what she says even more disorienting, and not just because of the cloud of wine cooler breath that comes out of her icy pink frosted lips: why don’t you leave him alone. you’ve done enough to ruin his life—his and his ex’s, thanks to you—so leave him alone why don’t you why don’t you just leave. and as quick as that like you are a warty toad or a poisonous slug that might crawl farther up her arm she drops you and teeters away. it’s so fast and so furious you’re not sure it really happened at all except this morning there are three dark bruises on your forearm from where she was grabbing you, from where her nails dug in.

  Becca

  Midnight Message

  I’m not sure what

  time it is or day it is but it is pitch-black,

  I’m half-asleep,

  and my phone is ringing by my bed.

  Seeing Freya’s number I have it at my ear, hear:

  I told her for you. I told her so.

  She’s gone now. She’ll be gone. He won’t touch her.

  He left.

  And I am half-dead in my pajamas,

  but she is drunk

  and she is stupid

  so I say Where are you? Do you need a ride?

  And all I get is a tired yawndrawl:

  There’s a bed here. I’ma bed now.

  I hear the sound of pillows,

  her dry mouth,

  and not much else.

  Are you okay Freya? Do you need me there?

  And she is a long time answering

  —she is probably passing out—

  she won’t remember what she says next,

  but I won’t forget:

  He left—he left her. She won’t be bothering you now.

  Freya’s Phone Call Sinks In

  Going through the New York Times Book Report

  Sunday morning with Mom—scones and coffee still

  warming our bellies,

  shearling slippers still warming our feet—

  a sly smile

  creeps from nowhere across my face, remembering

  —about a week ago—the redhead saying,

  Boys are assholes, when a gang of cute ones

  with guitars came in.

  They cut in front of her,

  made a mess with sugar packets,

  caused a ruckus laughing,

  and left no tip.

  I didn’t

  know what to say to her, didn’t know

  what to think about

  those brown eyes so serious, mad

  and a little hurt.

  Relying on Reconnection

  LeVaughn’s laugh.

  Hannah’s dramatics.

  Paloma’s patience.

  Summer’s smile.

  Jackson’s jokes.

  Maddy’s hysterics.

  Jonah’s guitar.

  Grace’s style.

  They are all out there

  —in the Monday parking lot—

  still enjoying the things

  that once made us all friends.

  While I am inside

  looking out at them

  wondering how I

  came to this lonely end.

  Will they forgive me

  if I go out there?

  Will they say sorry,

  it is
too late?

  Our senior year

  —this is my last chance—

  to trust our old bonds

  and change my fate.

  Renegotiating Terms

  Lunchtime and usually

  I am headed to the bleachers

  or the library

  to cram in some homework

  that somehow hasn’t been done.

  But it’s amazing

  how much easier homework is

  when there’s no boyfriend anymore

  to distract you from doing it,

  how much time you have to do

  really anything you want.

  Like meet Paloma

  in the parking lot, to go off campus

  for bagels and soup.

  The broccoli and cheese is the best,

  and do you like bagels with salt? I just

  discovered them and I

  think I’m going to marry one I love them that much.

  She is talking to me

  a mile a minute, like she’s been storing things for me

  for just this lunch—

  not just gossip

  but personal weird things

  like that bagel business

  and other silly things she knows I’ll get.

  I am not saying anything

  about Alec (for once)

  and maybe I don’t have to—or ever will.

  Instead we chatter about TV,

  she eats French onion. We laugh and giggle,

  drive back to school.

  On the way to class I want to tell her

  Thank you for being here. For saying yes.

  But I guess I don’t need to

  —she’s shown me she’s always been my friend—

  I just need to keeping coming back,

  keep honoring

  my end of the deal.

  Odd

  Nineteen

  days

  since we

  hung

  up, and

  not

  one

  single

  call.

  What’s

  weird about this

  is

  not

  that he hasn’t

  but

  today’s

  the first

  day

  I

  counted

  at

  all.

  Gratitude

  I made brownies.

  When she got home,

  Mom groaned out loud with pleasure

  —Good God girl, what’ve you done?—

  but I kept only a couple

  for me and for her.