After the Kiss

by Terra Elan McVoy

The rest are for Nadia, for me to take to work,

  to somehow tell her

  thank you

  for all that she’s done to help me get here.

  For telling me the truth

  when I didn’t want to hear it,

  for showing me how to walk

  with your head held up

  even if your heart is broken, and weeping inside.

  For letting me hang out and joke

  in the kitchen with Denver,

  when it’s slow on the floor

  and there are vegetables to slice.

  For helping me feel the spot where his

  smiling maybe-he-likes-me eyes,

  his offer to take me out

  on a tandem bike,

  and his friendly hand touching

  my shoulder—my waist

  gives me a familiar/strange thrill

  in a neglected place.

  I want to thank her for being

  someone to like and look up to;

  for being like the chocolate I used in this recipe—

  dark and unapologetic,

  strong

  and still sweet.

  Looking for Her

  The redhead’s not here.

  Freya is

  eager for me to jump the gap now. She says

  there has been enough time, I should kick it

  up a notch.

  You should swap digits. Go shopping. You always

  like her clothes.

  And I can still feel my hand

  on that invisible knife,

  still want to see blood, still want

  —I’m not sure what, but—something cruel.

  But seven o’clock, eight

  and that’s not why I’m looking.

  It is way after

  her weekly animal shelter shift, something

  I know about only

  because when I asked once how her day was,

  she said full of puppies and I asked her more.

  I thought then

  I might just tell her who I am,

  might throw down my cards,

  see what kind of ace was in her sleeve.

  I don’t want

  to like her for writing with discipline,

  for volunteering

  to take care of puppies

  and not shopping and gossiping

  or whatever else it is rich,

  beautiful boyfriend-stealers like her do after school,

  but here I am

  wiping down the cake cooler,

  wondering what kind she would have ordered

  if she’d come in tonight?

  Kitchen Surprise

  After three straight hours

  of Saturday mayIhelpyou face,

  strand of hair plastered

  to my clammy forehead and

  back/fingers breaking

  from the heaviness of the slosh-full bussing bucket,

  I slump myself into the kitchen,

  dreading the dishwasher’s steaming mouth.

  I am a sour dishcloth,

  a frown from the inside out

  until I round the corner and find

  Denver in his dirty shorts,

  and that interesting tattoo

  —his hands working up and down,

  his body an arc of concentration.

  I am not sure

  which is more of a surprise

  at the end of this frantic night—

  a cute boy in the kitchen

  randomly juggling tomatoes,

  or his smiling through the arc of them

  saying there is

  a party at Nadia’s after work and

  do I want to go?

  Runaway Imagination

  Bussing tables, barely concentrating,

  I fizz with fantasy—

  a kind that’s been faded for a while.

  Those slidesmile eyes,

  that knowing wink,

  the heat

  in his I-think-nineteen-year-old hand when he

  presses a palm to my shoulder,

  letting me know he’s coming through

  with another tray of muffins.

  If I went back there again now,

  glossy-lipped, would Denver press me into the cooler,

  strong, taut, slender cycling boy sliding me onto the

  giant steel sink,

  squeezing me against the butcher block,

  moving those bike-mechanic hands against my—

  where?

  A plate clatters to the floor,

  doesn’t smash but

  is enough

  to snap me back to here and now.

  Clean up the mess, go wash hands,

  splash cold water on my face—flushing foolish

  in the bathroom mirror.

  Retie the apron,

  re-enter reality:

  me and him so pretend

  I can’t even make it up.

  Nadia’s Apartment

  When we get there it’s crowded

  but I don’t care

  much about the people.

  There is the smell of garlic-incense-flowersoap-old sheets

  and something dusty I can’t define,

  but it might be freedom.

  There are

  stacks of CDs on an old leather trunk,

  a laptop plugged into the stereo, and headphones

  bigger than my feet.

  I can’t imagine the furniture ever matching

  anywhere else, and on the wall there is

  an astonishing painting

  of a nude in repose:

  huge peachy breasts pushed forward but

  eyes blue blanks of disinterest.

  On the opposite wall her partner

  —bare-chested Jim Morrison—

  dances among some small postcards of birds

  I think someone drew.

  Past this den of cool (books and bookshelves and

  crates of more books)

  is the tiny kitchen where open shelves are crammed

  with Chinese blue-and-white bowls,

  chipped mugs,

  heavy white restaurant plates,

  and thick Mexican glasses lumpy with bubbles

  and blue rims.

  Bottles of beer

  and ice

  fill the whole sink

  and my mother would faint

  if she saw that dirty stove.

  On the windowsill

  a Britney Spears doll gets carried off

  by a plastic Godzilla,

  and two speckled quail’s eggs rest in a porcelain bowl,

  beside a faded postcard

  from somewhere in France.

  The refrigerator is covered

  with silly magnets and crazy snapshots

  and I am dizzy with wanting

  to see my face where hers is in each picture,

  smiling with arms around

  these pierced-nose, spike-haired friends.

  Someone hands me

  a giant Mason jar—bits of mint float on top.

  The taste is thick with sweet, and something sharp.

  Later in the bathroom

  with its tiny vintage tiles and

  cracking pink pedestal sink I

  keep myself from peering in her medicine cabinet,

  looking through her toiletries,

  and instead stand staring in the mirror

  even my very reflection

  wishing to be Nadia too.

  A Real Party

  At a real party there are

  bottles of red wine and white,

  corkscrews and real corks

  instead of wine coolers

  and twist-off caps.

  No one break-dances

  in the middle of the kitchen—

  no one break-dances

  anywhere.

  They all bob their heads

  and move a little

  but are much more interested

&
nbsp; in intelligent talk.

  At a real party people bring

  their own six-packs

  to put in a cooler

  or in the sink.

  They don’t charge money

  at the front door

  to pay for the keg

  crammed in the back room.

  At a real party no one sneers

  if they’ve never seen you.

  They are friendly

  and ask your opinion—they shift around chairs

  to make more room.

  At a real party no one is smoking

  those stupid Swisher Sweets

  or coughing on cloves,

  just pretending to inhale.

  Instead they have Zippos

  and fancy metal cases;

  they tip their heads back,

  don’t exhale in your face.

  At a real party your friend

  introduces you to her boyfriend,

  so happy she knows you

  and glad to show you off.

  At a real party you can talk freely;

  you don’t have to try

  to be something you’re not.

  People listen, and they include you.

  You can also make eyes

  at the boy who asked you

  and maybe he will smile back

  instead of pretending not to see.

  Finally when it is so late

  and you have to get home—

  you will climb into bed, smiling,

  your mind dancing with the pictures

  —so many, so swirling—

  of your first

  real party.

  Camille

  crashing

  it all makes sense and now you just want to disappear. those bruises on your arm, the sadness in his face, the strangeness of the whole three weeks all equal one big black hole you hate facing and practically can’t. back-pat yourself all you want about how careful you are, about how in and out of minefields you can dart, pride yourself on how clean you can keep things, how you never stain your own pristine white blouse, but look in the mirror and realize this is nothing but a big bloody mess. not only have you betrayed that lovely boy in chicago—he’d despise you if he knew what you were doing to forget him—but to make it worse you are now someone else’s cheat. by trying not to step in the quicksand you’ve fallen off a cliff, onto a pile of daggers coated in burning acid. so now you are the biggest fool. and worse, a hateful fool. you knew so much but you knew nothing. now everything crashes around you and for the first time you look at yourself and know that you deserve it. you deserve to feel this smashed.

  hooky

  facing all those faces you are faking being friends with just can’t happen today. lucky for you you truly were ill with your own disgust for yourself all day yesterday so are plenty pale and wan when mom comes in to wake you. she’s got tennis with liz and then some volunteer meeting so you are left alone to drift around the house and float from pantry to couch—covered in blankets—lame tv, a hundred thousand channels of distraction and none of them loud or obnoxious enough to fully drown it out—to drown out anything—because superimposed over the screen you see a replay of the last three weeks, all tinted now in a vomitous green color, everything grimed and sticky with deceit, that bonfire flickering in your mind like the flames of breakup hell you’ve thrown him and this poor girl (whoever she is) into, the flames where you belong too. they were obviously going to break up anyway if he was after you like that, but you didn’t ask to be a part of it, and wouldn’t have if you had the smallest hint. you didn’t ask to even talk to him, let alone be the means for his escape, and now the idea is so unpleasant you have to climb upstairs into the tub, turn on the water as hot as you can stand to sluice off the slime coating that is forever on you now. you are not sad in the slightest about him; he can write himself a hundred hokey haiku a day and still in his core he will be just another jock dickhead. that doesn’t matter. he’s done and gone and you shed no tears for him. it’s not him you can’t believe, it’s you. you can’t believe you did this and you can’t believe you let this happen. how could you let this happen how could you not see it in him how could you not know how could you be so stupid how could you?

  the girl you don’t know

  you’re lying on the couch in your bathrobe flipping through elle and picture after picture of girl after girl gets you wondering about his girl—the other girl—and what she’s like. being who he is on the baseball team you figure she must be hot, but knowing what you know about his poetic side you know she also has to be smart. and sensitive. and interesting. and so maybe she isn’t that good-looking at all, at least not in maxim terms. maybe she’s pretty in a different way, like a waterhouse painting or a modigliani. maybe she’s bookish with glasses and blah hair and a bit of an overbite. maybe the rest of the team made fun of him and so that’s why he went after you. to prove something to them. to prove something to her. or maybe, if he was proving something, she is good-looking (you are picturing a tiny small girl—a girl like a fawn—with barbie blond hair and huge sweet blue eyes) and too many other people thought so too. maybe you were a revenge hookup. maybe she’d already done something to him. or he thought she might and so wanted to show her two could play at that game. but a girl like that wouldn’t have a friend like that, would she? (that skinny freckled girl with the big sloppy mouth and the ihateyou eyes.) or maybe the friend was the issue—he hated her, she hated him—but being mr. sensitive-haiku-boy he didn’t know how to tell her and you were the way out. maybe she wasn’t poetic at all, and that was the problem. she had to be something. there had to be something wrong with her. because otherwise why would he have come after anybody, especially someone as horrible as you?

  affirmation of what you already knew

  slow stroll still in your bathrobe for at least a glimpse of the sun today. down to the mailbox in bare feet even though it’s gotten cold again. the freeze at least is feeling something, though mom will be home soon and you should clean things up, get some real clothes on, try to make everyone feel like everything’s getting better. flip through the junk mail—insurance offers, dad’s travel magazines—and head back to the house trying not to feel disappointed, trying not—definitely not—to feel maybe tears crawling up the back of your eyeballs. what did you expect when you still haven’t written anything back, have barely been an online presence since you got here? what did you expect when you’re the girl standing by the burning bridge with a match in your hand? you didn’t want—don’t want—anything or anyone and now that’s completely what you’ve got. so cut it out because you are not sad thinking maybe he gave up and maybe it’s over and maybe you’ll never see him again (because you already knew you wouldn’t, didn’t you? you knew that you already did). all you really wanted when you headed down the drive just now was an easy ego-stroke, something to make you feel like someone out there in the universe might think you’re okay, even though you know better. you didn’t want him, you just wanted what he can do for you. you didn’t want him. you didn’t.

  unwanted memories #4, 5, and 6

  you can’t stop them they just come in a constant stream: that time you cut your last class and got to the institute early so you could actually walk around together before his shift started at the coat check and he took you downstairs and you said you’d already seen the miniatures, and you were joking and he laughed and led you by the hand down the stairs and around some corners and it wasn’t the miniatures he wanted to show you at all but this other whole room full of crazy drawings–there was a dali in there, you remember that—all avant-garde and funky and he sighed happily and said this is my favorite room and you said of course it is and he kissed you right there without even worrying about the guard. some other time he kissed you too—was it a week later? four? in millennium park when it was freezing cold and dark so dark early but he wanted to meet you after work so you went there and stood under the bean together and in the reflection of that round gle
aming impossible liquid bead of metal you kissed him, one eye on your bent reflection, reflecting over and over. another kiss—where were you going?—on the el; you only remember he had his messenger bag on the floor between his feet and was so tall and leaning over you, your boots bumping his bag as you stretched yourself up to his face to kiss him could not ever stop kissing him or get enough of kissing.

  sorry attempt

  it’s a stupid set of stationery—some frilly set your mom gave you back when you were writing letters—but it is the only thing you have. you have paced the house six times and now mom and dad are giving you raised eyebrows, you know you look a little crazy. so back up to your bedroom—is anyone studying anymore, at this point in the game?—and take out the first sheet. dear—, you write, and then stare at it, stupid, unable to even write his name. you could just e-mail him you could call him right now instead of this, but you know he has abandoned his side of the bridge; you waited too long it is too late, so at least a letter you can burn when you’re finished. you write that you don’t blame him, that you’d’ve left sooner. did leave sooner. and then your words begin to pour and the main thing you’re saying is i’m sorry i’m sorry over and over sometimes in capital letters. sorry you didn’t meet him that second time he asked—when you left him to wait by the lions while you rode out to wrigley instead, knowing he was waiting and being so afraid, you had to flee. sorry for being too eager to kiss him and then sorry for not kissing him at the picasso sculpture that day because of your cold. sorry you don’t deserve him. sorry for the last month. sorry for not writing back—sorry for not saying immediately you are so awesome, and yes. sorry for not having better outfits sorry for skittishness. sorry, sorry, so sorry for having to leave, and for every stupid substitute someone else since. by the end you are crying in earnest and you know you will never see him—you can barely see the paper—and mom knocks on the door to say good night. she sees your face she sees the crumpled paper and she sits beside you and strokes your hair. why you are collapsing into her shoulder you are not really sure but she is good smells and comfort and she only says one thing: oh honey i’m sorry.

  what you don’t know might kill you

  in the morning you are not sure about anything. at school you look around and realize you’re surrounded by strangers. oh you thought you already knew them, but that was because you didn’t really want to know them. and looking around this morning at this ever-busy hive of bees, you’re still pretty sure about the latter. but they are your friends for this town, the people you need in order to make the clock move on its axis and the sun curve across the sky, and you thought you knew them. knew enough, at least. but you also thought, if the catcher were off-limits, they’d clue you in in some way, let you know. now you know you’re an idiot for thinking that—look how they swap around with each other—maybe people with partners mean nothing to them, or mean something different you don’t really know anything about. you want to ask ellen now: did you know? did you? but what if she smiles and shrugs and tells you of course, acts like you’re stupid, decides she doesn’t want to know you anymore, if you’ve got a problem with it? take a good look at her now. see all the things you don’t really know. size up simon-sam-edgar too and ask yourself what you know about them. maybe they have nightmares. maybe their band is actually good. maybe they don’t make the grades they claim to. maybe they sometimes feel ashamed. look at jessica. look at autumn. give a glance to flip. you think you know them, but you just judge them. and though you may be right, you still don’t really know. you felt safe in your quick little assessments but now your methods have proven faulty and you’ve got to try to start all over. because now it’s clear you never know what might turn on you—or when all the things you don’t know might not really keep you safe.