after he’s undressed
my notebook.
Whenever we orbit each other,
his right hand swims
around my hand
like a fish wiggling
toward bait
until it envelops
mine.
Before,
he tentatively
teased my
peripheral vision.
Now he is
in my face,
against my skin,
on my mind.
One Afternoon
we collapse on a porch
swing, my head
in his lap,
his hands separating
my
curls,
one
by
one.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I don’t want to grow up.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Immortality, fame, plastic surgery . . .
What about you?”
“Same.”
We Haven’t Gone on a Date Yet
but I think we’re in love.
I can’t believe I just used
that word
un-ironically—
without a single
quotation mark.
I write about
him
all the time
lately.
Everything we do is a poem.
I’ve been consulting
the thesaurus for
synonyms
for him, like:
nubile, sultry, dishy,
and
bewitching.
Boys don’t usually
make me look up
new words
to describe
them.
8 Things I Love
Her voice
Her voice saying my name
Her voice ripping Greg a new one
Her poetry
Her voice reading her poetry aloud
Her eyes
Her eyes reading my poetry
Her
On the House
I know how to mix a gin & tonic
perfectly,
just the way Mom likes it.
Tonight, she’s being
difficult, hard to please, but
I’m a good
drink-tender.
I know how to
pretend
to listen
(learned it from her)
and increase
the alcohol
with each drink—
until the snoring starts.
Then, I can sneak out into my
cool secret,
my late-night
life.
He sits on the corner
where I’m hoping he’ll be,
and I can’t wait to sink down
next to him, smile, and forget,
but I can’t forget.
I dwell and simmer
and eventually boil
over into tired tears.
He says, “What, what, what—
what is it?”
So I talk about
Mom
Dad
Sam
gin
tonic
and more,
but not about
Brian Kipley
because
some secrets
are just too
embarrassing.
He listens,
and then
says, “What a
bunch of
morons!”
He pulls me next to him,
stomps out his cigarette,
and says:
“Girl, you know,
you are
better than
a best friend. You
are more
than the sum of the parts
of your life.
Do you see that star?”
“That’s Mars.”
“Exactly. Everybody else
are mere stars.
You, however, are the sky.”
“Like huge?”
“No, like
you contain multitudes.”
First Clue
“What about your parents?” I’m laughing when I ask because of something he said before, but his face loses all its little bit of color.
“Assholes.”
“It’s like they were never young, you know?”
“If they were ever like us, that’s the saddest think I’ve ever thought.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Trust me. I really, REALLY do not want to become my parents.”
First Kiss
After
the crowd on the corner
dissolves,
and the nearest streetlight
goes black,
he asks
if he can
walk me home.
“You ready to give me a chance yet?”
“Ugh.”
“What?”
“That’s what you wrote in her social studies book.”
“Yeah, but that was BS.”
“And this is—”
“What’s a guy got to do to get a girl like you?”
Then he slides
his thick, solid arm
around my waist
and turns me toward him.
First,
his lips graze mine
so slowly I tremble;
his stubble, so foreign,
tickles my cheek.
Then, his big hands
rest on my hips,
hold me steady
as if otherwise
I might float away.
His lips
beg
me
by brushing
over mine
again and again
’til I
give up
and open—
With his tongue,
he teaches me
how to shiver
from the
outside
in.
Good Morning
I wake up hard
with a mental picture of her. I don’t know
if I dreamed it or remembered it
from the future. But this memory/dream
is a stain
that won’t come out
of my mind: her wild hair splayed on a pillow
and all those
dark clothes finally peeled off her
pale
body.
I have to stay,
lie under the blanket for a while,
light a smoke, and just think.
Check the clock, it’s only noon, so
I have to wait, but seeing her
is All I Can Think.
When I do, when I show up at her
house two minutes
after she’s gotten off the bus,
I know my eyes must be
blazing, racing
like my heartbeat.
Another cigarette doesn’t help.
My hands sweat as she
smiles and asks,
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I tell her,
“now.”
Rendezvous
“Hello?”
“You’re up.
Can I see you?”
“It’s 3:30 in the morning . . .”
“I know.”
“. . . on a school night.”
“So?
Isn’t your mom passed out?”
Outside, I get the chills,
but not because of the frosty air.
Every footstep
sounds so loud
the night might
light up and unveil me.
Then I perceive his silhouette
in the triangle glow
of a streetlamp.
He walks toward me like a
tamer might
>
walk toward a spooked lion.
“Girl, my heart stops
when I see you;
I have whole
minutes
of sanity, I swear.”
“Hey.”
“One syllable
from you
is my
alcohol.
I get the
courage
to grab you
and kiss you
and make you
remember
me
like
I remember you.”
View
We go
to the corner,
to the coffee shop,
to the woods,
to my bed
room, but
we never go
to his house—
not since that
day he opened
his notebook
to me.
I wonder
for a while,
and then I
ask why.
He changes the subject,
and he’s got a million subjects.
But one day,
dark clouds
roll in and
block the sun.
Raindrops explode
like liquid bullets
down our backs.
We are so wet
we shiver,
but my house
is off-limits
(Mom’s up), so
he leads me to
the back door
of his, and
in we sneak
directly
to his room.
I barely
see the dehydrated
flowers, the
framed heart prints,
the handmade
afghans
on the way.
Once we get
into his room,
he breathes.
He takes off his shirt first,
then my jacket,
unzipping, standing so close
I forget to inhale.
Even though
the heat is on,
I get chilly
bumps.
Only a few
molecules of
oxygen, a
polka-dot bra,
and a wet
T-shirt
separate
us.
He pulls off
his soaked-through
Levis and
leaves them
where they drop.
“Want a dry shirt?”
I nod, and he comes
over, grabs the soft hem
between bony fingers, and lifts
my wet Sex
Pistols shirt
over my head.
We stand body
to body
for a second before
he reaches behind me,
skin skimming me,
and abracadabras
a dry blue
cotton
tee
from his bed.
He pulls on
fresh jeans, grabs a shirt for himself,
but before he can
put it on,
thunder rolls through
the room: a deep, low
growl announces
the approach
of . . .
“My dad,”
he whispers.
His terrified expression
tells the rest of the story.
Truth is I’d never seen Random Boy
scared before that moment.
“They don’t know
we’re here,” he
warns. He wraps
his strong arms
around my waist
and I feel
complete
-ly
safe.
I turn up my face
to kiss his chin,
and he pulls me
tighter.
We hide
behind his
bedroom door
while lightning
crashes in the next
room. I wonder what’s
smashing, why he’s
so ferocious. I flinch
and hold
my Boy. He
doesn’t release
me until we hear
his mother
crying,
begging:
“Please stop. Please—”
He closes his eyes
and squeezes me
so hard it hurts.
I don’t blame him
for hiding,
but
when he
lets me go,
flings open his bedroom door
and screams—
“Get off of her!”
—I realize I’ve got a hero
on my hands.
I watch from the
doorway as
he stands colossally
between
cowering
mother and
snarling father.
He clenches a fist
so close to his dad’s
face, I wince.
“Leave. Her. Alone!”
The father/monster
looks amused. He
says, “Come here,
you pussy,”
grabs the Boy’s neck, and
shoves his head down
so fast
I don’t see
father/monster’s knee
come up
to greet my Boy’s
face. My fear
wants me to fly
as they fight, but
I make myself watch
instead. I make myself
be as still as stone. The one thing
I can’t do now
is leave this Random Boy
alone.
I wish I were strong
enough to stop them.
I meet
Random Boy’s eye
between two
fast-paced punches, a right, a left.
He winks at me—as if
it’s all a show. He is not
being destroyed.
This Boy
is his mama’s only defense,
and although it looks so, so bad,
he smiles a bloody-teeth smile
before he falls,
and his dad
finally
stops.
Mother/victim
—still on the ground—
rubs her side
for a minute
before insisting
it was nothing.
Everyone should forget this.
She eyes me suspiciously.
I cringe
in the doorway
and shake
when the monster sees me
standing out: a stranger at this
secret family meeting.
But Random
Boy reanimates, shaking it off
like a stubbed toe. His eyes flash up and
first thing they find is mine.
He rescues me with an outstretched hand
and a dizzy expression.
He re-invites me
back out
into the rain.
We go
where he likes to go
when he doesn’t know
where to go.
I ask if he wants to talk
about it, but he only
buries his fractured head
in the crook of my neck and
cries like an animal
that knows
it’s dying.
He only grips my hips
so I can’t move.
And I don’t care
because I don’t want to move.
I don’t want to run.
I know how it feels
to be your parents’
stupid mistake.
I want to un-break
him, too.
Shakes
I smoke less.
I can’t finish a poem
without including your name
somehow.
I picture caged birds
and your empty pages.
I can’t stop thinking of
your felt-tip miracles
just waiting to happen.
Shift
He’s going to teach me how to drive.
He shows up in his dad’s pickup,
a stick.
I say,
“Are you kidding me?”
(smirks)
He says I got to find the balance
between clutch and gas.
At the same time,
he slides his hand
over my thigh
and squeezes.
“Feel it?”
I stall out.
He laughs.
But when I keep stalling out,
he gets mad.
He reaches for the gearshift, relents,
then cradles his head
in his hands
like I’m hurting him.
He says nothing is wrong,
yet he shakes.
When I say it doesn’t matter,
he gets madder. He
huffs and puffs
cigarettes
one after another.
I tell him:
“I don’t want to learn from you.
You’re a bad teacher.”
I get out of the truck,
slam the door,
and walk home.
Couples Fight
and that’s what we are,
though not
in so many words.
Truth is—
I don’t get
how someone
so smart
can’t do
something
so simple.
But after I sit in the passenger seat
for a while, thinking about
her hesitant turns,
her wide eyes,
I start to smile
and wish
she were still
here.
I start to feel like my lungs
are collapsing
without her
exhalations
to inhale.
So I return the truck
to the driveway,
silently,
exactly
as I found it.
I take a shortcut
to the corner
and inhale
the breeze
blowing by.
I find her
illuminated
red
in front of the Coke machine;
she is trying to decide.
“Sorry,” I beg her.
She sighs,
chooses.
The can
loudly
clunks
down
to
her feet.
She bends, reaches,
and opens
it, takes a sip, and
hands the can over.
“What next?”
“You tell me.”
Nightkissing
I never knew you
could memorize
someone’s lips
with your tongue,
muscles
with palms,
or the intricate patterns
of fingerprints
with your
bare skin.
If school were like this,
I’d have better grades.
Justice
Everyone drops
away into the night
in couples and singles
and great big chunks of
curfew-bound
souls.
Somehow,
The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl & Random Boy Page 3
