I convince her to stay.
“My mother,” she says,
“will kill me.”
“Would I
let that happen?”
(laughs)
“Good thing
I’m already dead.”
Moonlight slides through the cracks
of our tree house ceiling
and
falls in sharp-edged shapes
and lines
on our
skin.
I only see these geometrical
pieces of her,
but
this is what I love:
Finally,
it is
just us
and the soft sounds
of wilderness.
Without all the civilized
threats of others,
I can lay my head
on her chest and hear
her
heart beat
only for me.
“Stay with me,”
I beg,
“all night.”
(She takes a deep breath,
a fidgety
sigh
of
discontent.)
“What the hell,”
she whispers.
“She can’t kill me twice.”
We collide
softly
against
each other
all night,
but never break through.
“Young Lady”
I hate that term
of en-fear-ment.
She only calls me that
when I’m
unladylike.
“Where have you been all night?”
“I fell asleep at
a friend’s house.”
(Too transparently generic—
she sees right through
with her X-ray
Mom eyes.)
“I tried to call
but you didn’t
answer,” I say.
“You didn’t call. What friend?”
“Mary.”
I regret it
as soon as I say
it. If Mom checked,
who knows what Mary
might
say?
“Young lady,
congratulations!
You are now the
owner of a shiny new
curfew!”
You Know How
you wake up with a headache,
a pounding throb against
your skull that threatens
to manifest in your stomach
as an unstoppable puke,
but then
someone appears
with a cold, sweaty glass
of water and a few extra-
strength Tylenol and
tells you to lie back and let
the pain evaporate into oblivion.
You shut your eyes
feel the sharp
edges blur—
Love is when
someone allows you
escape
from it all
if only for a minute.
That’s how my body reacts
to her running toward me,
wrapping her legs around me,
melting into my skin.
She’s a pain killer,
addictive and sweet.
Sullen
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t seem like nothing—”
(He scowls
at demons
I can’t see.)
“Did I do something?”
“No.”
“Is it your parents?”
(silence)
“Yeah. Well, I don’t want
to talk about your problems
anyway—”
(Secretly, I do. I do.)
I climb on his lap
and face him, let my legs
dangle on either side
of his.
I baby kiss his forehead,
bury more kisses in the curled-up ends
of his hair.
I stretch my arms around
his neck and squeeze so tight
that my body is
blocking out everything
but us.
He doesn’t say anything.
His response is
purely physical.
Not the Problem
I don’t know why
I give her
the silent treatment. I am
giving the world the
silent treatment,
and she catches
the ricochet.
The problem is the million obstacles
between us. The problem
is my parents.
My father
doesn’t care
who’s there,
he’ll beat
my mother
for the stupidest
thing. For nothing
even.
If he touched Her,
I’d snap. I’d
blow. I’d go
black. And blue. And
blurry. I just know
I’d self-destruct
into so many pieces
I’d never get put back
together.
She won’t be meeting the parents
again anytime soon. Or ever.
She can
take
away a lot
of shit. She can
probably save
me,
but even she
isn’t strong enough to
stop
that
particular
hell.
Let Me
into your secret
world.
Show me the gates
you think
confine you.
I’ll rip them down.
Show me your
deepest fear.
I’ll kill it for you.
At the Laundromat
I slide my
Cougars hoodie
over my shoulders
and head,
add it to the pile
with the rest,
which means
I have to stand there
in nothing but a
snug white t-shirt,
threadbarely
covering
my black bra.
Looked fine in my room,
but now I wonder if it’s
stupid
or pretty.
Even pooled together,
we have hardly enough change
to throw our jackets in a dryer.
We’re only here because paying customers are allowed
to soak up the free heat.
Everybody stares
at me
crossing my arms
over that blatantly black bra,
or maybe it just feels that way
because
Random Boy’s eyes
are angry
almost.
My chills
get chillier.
Coming here was his idea,
but I can foresee
the fight we’ll have later.
As we “enjoy” 12 minutes
of warm, dry, inside time,
Random Boy
seethes
silently;
it’s
all
I
hear.
Finally,
when I pull that hot hoodie
over my frozen shoulders,
I feel safe.
Sometimes it’s nice to have a roomy cotton
room where I can hide.
What She Doesn’t Know
What she can’t possibly know,
—’cause
who could do that
to someone
if she knew—
is that it feels
/>
like knives slicing
my intestines
when I see a guy
lean toward her
so subtly
she doesn’t notice
he’s looking down her shirt.
She makes it too easy for them,
as though she wants it.
As though I’m not enough.
Under the fluorescent lights,
she blushes softly
at my stare,
and all I can
see is
how easily
she switched
from impossible dream
to mine,
and how easily
it seems
she’ll turn right
back,
or away to one of these
guys
who cling, and stare, and touch.
Forewarning
“It’s not you.
It’s me.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Actually, it’s partly you.”
“Oh, please.”
“It’s the way I react to you—”
“How’s that?”
“For the most part,
you make my fists loosen,
but sometimes,
I clench so tight,
I feel as though I’m going
to break.
So I apologize
in advance—
because
I will hurt you
a million times.
But I want you
to remember
I regret it
unconditionally.
Underneath all that—whatever it is—
is sorry, sorry
me.”
Nursery Rhyme
Mom, Mom,
go away.
Don’t come back
some other day.
Get out of bed
and wash your face,
and run a sweeper
through this place.
Mom, Mom,
WTF?
Your little girl
is growing up.
Personal Graffiti
When the school bus steals you away,
I feel your magnetic soul
drag on mine,
and snap free.
It’s a bad feeling.
A premonition?
I think we both know
you don’t need no education.
You don’t pay attention anyway.
You just carve us into your notebook.
Class Disturbed
Someone steals
my attention
from Ms. Jackson’s
epic lecture
on epic poetry.
It’s a boy,
staring blatantly
at his phone/camera/etc.
as he holds it up between our faces.
He pushes a button,
and I smize into his lens on instinct,
a move I’ve been practicing
in mirrors
since the fourth grade.
His eyes leave his screen
and meet mine over the phone;
he smiles.
“You,
have a beautiful profile,”
he says.
Never been told that before.
“Here, look . . .” He turns
his phone toward me
and swipes his thumb across the screen.
Beyond the pic from today
is a sideways view of me
reading,
then one of me writing,
and then another,
and another . . .
“Dude, you’re a total
stalker.”
“Sorry, I just think you’re photogenic
and interesting.
I also have 296 pictures
of that sycamore—he waves to
the window behind him—
one for each day
I walked past it.
It’s a . . .
. . . different kind
of yearbook,
I guess.”
We don’t communicate
for the rest of class—
well, we don’t talk—
but I watch him glide
through photographs of
street signs and cigarettes,
hands and toes,
trees and me.
I wonder how I never noticed him
noticing me.
I think when you’re the kind of person
who feels she’s been forgotten,
you don’t see everything—
you forget yourself, too,
and you certainly don’t
notice the ones who
remember you
so quietly.
As we’re leaving class, he says,
“I like your shirt.”
(I look down at Random Boy’s
shrunken Buzzcocks T
tight against my boobs
and feel guilty.)
“I like yours, too.”
(He’s got a classic
rock thing
going on.)
“I also like how
you write in
short, straight
lines in print
so neat you
might be
a serial killer,”
he says.
Then he walks past me
and disappears
into the hallway masses.
Random Boy Meets My Mom
who eyes him like
chopped liver
on clearance.
He pulls me
close. She scowls.
“How long have you two been . . . ?”
“We’re not boyfriend/girlfriend,” I stutter.
“More like . . .”
(She stares at
only me.)
“. . . soul mates.”
She laughs bitter,
divorce-flavored
laughs.
She asks if his last name
belongs to the
couple she read about
in the paper.
His hunched shoulders
and bowed head,
his quiet yes
make me want to slap her.
“Well, it’s nice
to meet you . . .
. . . I guess.”
“The feeling
is mutual,”
he says
before grabbing my hand
and jerking me
out
side.
“I can see
why you can’t stand
to stay home.”
Why do his words
hurt
me?
All this time
I’ve wanted someone
to see,
but now
I wish he
were blind.
Hit Me Up
Next day
in school
while I am
daydreaming
instead of
note-taking,
something
hard and pointy
hits the back of
my head.
I turn
to find my
personal paparazzo
smiling at the
ceiling tiles.
When I unfold
the triangular
note,
I see his writing say:
“Truth is
I think you’re
exceptionally beautiful
inside
and
out.
Can we hang
sometime?”
Peter X
What freaks me out most
about this boy
is how he provokes
indistinct fluttery feelings
in my head
when
he speaks,
as if his
&
nbsp; voice
has mothy wings.
His words flap around
my brain long after he’s gone.
I got a man,
yet
I get chills
when we brush hands
accidentally.
How can
that be
when I’m
already
in love
with my
Random Boy?
The guilt
is
unbearable,
but it’s not
like
I can control
how I feel.
That
would
make
life
so
much
easier.
I want to write
about him,
but
given the
(Random Boy)
circumstances,
I shouldn’t.
If only I didn’t
have to write it all down,
but I do,
I do.
I don’t
know why.
It just makes me feel better,
less alone with my thoughts:
less liable
to forget all the truth.
So I give him a code name.
Chills
Sometimes,
Random Boy
is very
un-random.
Sometimes, he is über-direct.
When he runs
his rough fingertips
across
my
bare stomach,
it’s like
raindrops
falling
fast
and
hard
on the dusty
diamond
of the
baseball field;
I go from stoic
to saturated
in seconds.
So
delicate—
only his nails
actually touch my skin,
or maybe the auras
of his fingers—
they skim higher
and higher
until
they reach
the round bottoms
of my breasts
by accident
seeming
almost.
At first,
a cool tingle
rushes
through my torso,
then
fire
gushes
everywhere.
Something Holds Her
back from holding me
as tightly as I cling
to her.
She won’t call me
her boyfriend.
Something (or one) stands
between
us.
All I want
to do is
get her naked,
feel her
yield
completely.
All I want
is to be
indispensable
to her.
I ask around
at the corner.
I want to know
her secret stories—
the sleazy tales
she doesn’t share.
They are few,
and all mostly unbelievable.
Brian Dumbass Kipley
says he banged
her before
we met.
My “friend”
Shane
says he’d like to—
but I shatter
his crooked admission
with an expression
he can’t misconstrue.
At the coffee shop,
I mix
with the sugar and cream,
and interrogate
The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl & Random Boy Page 4
