The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl & Random Boy
Page 2
I’d be fooling only myself
if I thought these tight jeans
were a sign of my independence.
This two-hour artistic
exhibition is all for him.
Ugh.
Standing Up
Imagine the length
of my letdown
when I get to the place
we meet, flirt, and wonder
to find him absent—
?
Guess I shouldn’t expect
him here waiting,
panting
like a puppy,
like he has been,
but I did,
and now I’m chain-smoking,
ignoring everybody’s questions,
and searching the
crossroad horizons
for his shape
approaching.
Only he doesn’t appear
until more than an hour past
usual, and he’s slurring
his steps. Good thing
he’s got that tall glass
of water to lean on.
That’s the only
reason he’s hanging
on to her, right?
Yeah.
Right.
You Can’t Live With Them
Why do you look at me one day
and someone else the next?
I saw what you wrote in the
back of her social studies
notebook. Everyone did,
and now I don’t believe
a word you say,
said,
will ever utter again.
What Do You Want Me to Do?
Here’s my take
on girls—
They are
running a race, and guys
are just hurdles,
one of the ways
they
keep score.
I stare.
I prod.
I beg
with my eyes,
and she denies
every time.
So what do I do? Lie
back and let her heels
dig into my Play-Doh heart? Beg
her for hellos like she
says she wants
or
disregard her like she
does me?
Now, here’s the truth
about guys—
It’s not about love.
It’s about eating,
sleeping,
and sex.
I know
it’s douchebaggy,
but it’s true.
It FEELS true.
So what do I do?
Give up? Give in?
Deny myself?
Or
navigate
the minefield of
you,
armed
with fronted indifference?
Typical Conversation
“Ever wish your parents were dead?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’ll kill ’em for you.
All ya have to do is ask.”
“You’d have to find my dad first.”
“I would. Wouldn’t stop
’til I did
if that’s what you wanted.”
What a weird
thing to say—
romantic, sure,
but weird.
“Like in that movie?”
“What movie?”
“The one
with the girl and the boy
who are neighbors
who get each other
and fall in love
and run away.”
He just stares,
smiles.
That Poem
where she reveals
she has secret
wet dreams
starring
his lean
libido.
“That Poem” is
a love letter
to him:
Notice it isn’t a like-letter,
a friend request,
a note,
but an “I can’t
keep my head
straight
or
off of you”
admission.
Boy,
I feel dirty
just thinking
about you
whether I’m naked
or clothed. I
engage in
you-themed
meditation
to get clean.
Seeing Things
My mom,
lying in her musty covers,
likes to say
she’ll get her shit together
someday.
Maybe so.
She is still pretty
beautiful—for a mom.
I notice dudes checking her out
regularly. You know how guys are.
She doesn’t pay any mind,
and I don’t blame her.
Being that most humans
are liars, or liars in training,
it’s the smart thing to do.
On school days,
I get up before the sun,
eat breakfast alone,
and think
maybe this morning
will be the one
when
she starts
over.
Before I leave,
I lean my head
on her closed door.
“Mom.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going.”
“Okay.”
I wait a few seconds
until she begins
to cry.
Then
I leave.
Typical Conversation, Part 2
“How come you won’t look at me?”
“What’s the point?”
“Connections.”
“What’s the point?”
“Love.”
(Both of us stare at the cars going by
in opposite directions,
crisscrossing for a nanosecond,
then separating. To be honest,
my heart is beating a million
beats per minute.)
“I write poetry, too, you know.”
(I don’t believe him. I still don’t look at him.)
“I’ve never told anyone that.
Well, my mom knows.”
(Silence.)
“But even she hasn’t read it.”
(Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.
Exhale. Our cigarettes
have a hectic conversation.
Inhale, Exhale—
No one else is here
to drown them out.)
“You want to read my poetry sometime?” he asks, and
the air around me sounds like drum rolls and cymbals crashing;
a veritable symphony of swooning resounds,
but all I say is, “Sure.”
Dance
If I let you
read mine,
will you let me
read yours?
Obey
He pulls
my hand behind him
so I have no choice
but to follow.
He pulls me down
a side street, glancing
all over, all the time
for bullets
to dodge—
as if this street is some kind of
war zone.
His house
is the same as
all the other houses
on the outside:
white siding,
black shutters.
I am visualizing
the inside
when he tells me—
“Wait here.”
—and enters through
a back door
without
me. I twiddle
my fingers
and wallow
because
he do
esn’t want me
to meet
his family and vice
versa.
He emerges from a
front door with an
echo
of a woman’s voice
urging him
to come back,
but he ignores her and
smiles/walks to me—
downward-spiral
notebook in hand.
I follow him farther
down the street
to the periphery woods
that surround the playground, where
we don’t play
around.
We climb
into a
dilapidated tree house
decorated with sun-faded, water-bubbly Playboy
centerfolds our dads probably
gawped in the ’80s.
“What is this place?” I ask.
(I kick a pile of
dry leaves and cigarette butts,
which soften every corner
of this makeshift Shangri-La.)
“Where I go
when I don’t know
where else to go,”
he explains.
“Charming.”
“Private.”
He sits in crispy leaves,
and gives his ink-stained book
to
me.
Reading His Words
is
I guess
like
reading
his
diary,
seeing his room,
stealing his heart,
because I read
every genre
of writing
and his—
How can I describe it?
It’s like he’s cracked open the solid
watermelon
of his heart
and sweet, sticky truth is spilling everywhere.
Fangirl
I asked him
if I could have
a copy of that
one about me
on the
merry-go-round.
He ripped
the original
from his
notebook, and
I glued it in here.
I said,
“I want some others, too,
—to put in my marble notebook—
I want our poems to tell
the story of us.”
“My notebook is your notebook,” he said.
“Are you sure
you don’t want to keep them?”
He just
pointed
to his head
and then
to his heart.
This Is Getting Ridiculous
Grounded
because
I nitpicked
about
the state of her:
I said,
“Why don’t you
get up and
get a job
and get a life?”
And she called
me a bitch,
a grounded bitch.
I know we fight a lot.
We stab sharp word arrows
through each other’s hearts
daily so I should be used to it,
but the first time your mother
calls you the b-word,
you feel
the sting
straight
down
to
your
toes.
Man
Usually,
all I see
is her
and the hazy halo
the headlights
and rain make
around her face,
the starry
glimmer
in her dark eyes.
Usually, she is
as easy to spot
as a full moon
late at night.
She said she’d show.
But tonight
the sky is black,
moonless,
and all the girls
who pretend
to
love her
bump against me
and
betray her
trust.
It’s a devastating thing,
the teen age.
Lust is . . .
when all the someones
who wouldn’t talk to me
the night before
spontaneously
combust into
whores.
Missed Opportunist
Let me show you
how it goes:
He’s all,
I love you
love you
You,
You,
Just YOU,
and she’s all
but wait,
and then she
slowly
gives
herself
over,
just as
he sleeps
with
someone else
while
she
keeps
her lovelight burning
like
a dumbass.
It’s Like This
One minute you’re hot
(okay, you’re always hot),
and then
you cut like a car chase
so fast I can’t
follow.
So I deal
by drowning
my thoughts of you
in an alcohol
sea, and I become
this other me,
who doesn’t care,
or think,
or understand.
Just drink drink drink
and screw screw screw
things up.
To Get Back at Him
I give him the silent treatment,
only
in eye contact.
I go to the place
where the boys congregate
and I make sure I look good—
just like before,
but different now,
meaner somehow.
I hang on Greg’s
every word, and I
laugh at his asinine
jokes, and I’m not
going to lie,
I watch the frown
lines deepen
like scars
into that
Random Boy’s
face,
and I
enjoy it.
Intimate Conversation between Two People in the Middle of a Crowd
“I don’t like when you’re mad at me.”
“Too bad.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Go back in time and change history.”
“How far?”
“Huh?”
“I’m not a virgin, you know. I’m a guy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sex isn’t that important to guys. It’s like breathing. I don’t even realize I’m doing it.”
“Well, that’s really sad.” (I light a cigarette
whenever something pisses me off. That’s why
I smoke so many cigarettes.)
“What’s sad about it?”
“It’s not like when we were little
and everything was magic.
Now, it seems like so few things
in this life are awesome.
The truest moments are scarce
and instantaneously gone,
so you should maybe try
to appreciate them,
not squash their fiery
beauty into the ground
like cigarette butts.”
Mysteries I’m Ready to Reveal
“You never held up your end of the bargain, you know.”
“Pshhhht.”
“You said I could read your poetry.
You promised.”
“No, I didn’t. I don’t make promises.”
“Well, can I?”
“Only if . . .”
“What?”
“I’m thinking.
. . .
Only if
you . . .
. . . stop
hurting
me so
much.”
“How?”
“I’m not
your girlfriend
’n’
you’re not
my boyfriend,
but
that doesn’t mean
you should sleep with
other people.”
“From now on, I only sleep with you.”
“You Have to Understand
that a girl’s words
are her soul, and
her soul is her heart.
A marble notebook is the hope
chest of the modern day.
You should know
that
opening these pages
is like
unbuttoning my skin,
and once
we go in,
we can never go back.”
“I get it. I do.”
Then he pulls that notebook
out of my grasp,
and fumbling
to get it open,
drops it
on the
dirty pink carpet of my room.
When He Reads My Words
He goes as silent as death
and touches
his forehead,
crinkles his brows
like
he’s
thinking hard
thoughts.
Of course I’ve only shown him
the edited version.
I took out the
3 billion words
I’ve written about
him.
I read his expressions,
each immediate review:
When she lets me
see
what she’s always scribbling
in that marble notebook,
well,
it’s sort of a
disappointment—
not because it’s bad,
because I don’t know
the first thing,
but I know
I don’t see a word
in here
about me.
And I’m looking.
The Slip
When I was little,
Mom dressed me up
in silk
and taffeta so
she could
show me off.
That’s what church
is for, right?
Anyway, I remember
her tearing, smoothing, fixing
my childish stance before
standing back and taking me all in.
“Slip’s showing,”
she’d say with
a grimace—disappointed that no
matter how she pushed
and pulled,
underneath I was
still
undisguisable,
messy
me.
When he
turns a page, “That Poem”
falls
from between the pages,
revealing EVERYTHING,
and I fidget;
I readjust
my plan,
but it’s no use.
He’s discovered
my flimsy paper secret
verse.
He beams
like a little league rookie
who just hit his first
home run.
Even the Air
is different