he is totally
vulnerable,
a little boy
who just met
the biggest, baddest
wolf (the one
inside himself) and
somehow
survived.
The sobs
grow wilder
though quieter,
so I take off a layer—
remove his jacket and
peel away his shirt.
He presses against me,
lets me know
it’s working, so I shed
my layers, too,
until
nothing is
between us. Soon,
he is my
big, strong Man
again.
He walks me home
afterward, the long way,
avoiding the blood-stained corner.
It is
just us,
and a thousand
stars. If only
the night
would not fade away
into light,
everything
could stay ignored
and okay.
When I Next See Peter X,
I understand
the stares,
the whispers.
I feel . . .
When I try to
talk to him, he
ignores me so
hard the veins
in his black and blue neck
strain
solid.
Should I
have stayed? I didn’t
know he would . . .
(. . . maybe I did).
I didn’t do it,
I didn’t
bruise
his skin,
so why
do I feel
like I did?
I Try to Return the Phone to Peter X
but first, I carefully wipe dried blood from
the cracked screen and polish
it to a sheen.
(Mary slipped me the phone
on the sly
at the corner
one night
when Random Boy wasn’t looking.)
I wait outside chem,
aware of everything and everyone
in the hall,
aware of the sweat
gleaming from my pores,
aware of every pixel
of his 182 digital shots
of me.
As he limps with dignity
I can’t muster
toward me,
I am aware
this probably won’t go well.
He spots the phone in my hand
and his eyes flicker and blink in
misunderstanding.
“Thanks.”
“Thanks.”
(Our silence seeps
past the lockers, attracting
an audience
he doesn’t acknowledge
and I can’t ignore.)
“So, I hear you still have a boyfriend.”
I nod and swallow.
“That’s . . .”
(This stretch of time, mere
nanoseconds,
I scroll through a million words
to finish his sentence:
typical, insane, stupid,
masochistic, true, psychotic . . .)
“. . . enlightening.”
Enlightening. I make a face that begs
for more information,
but he doesn’t offer.
He just captures my confused face
on his microchip
and moves on.
Like Mother
When Dad left,
Mom stared at the door
that was closed on her
for hours.
Later, she explained
she wasn’t ready to take
the first step
into
inevitable
ever after.
What finally
roused her
from the worst
dream (reality)
was me
rifling through
the spoiled food in the fridge.
While she was ready to starve
to death, she wouldn’t
let her daughter
do it.
She got up
to make
macaroni and cheese
from a box
(baby steps)
that night.
Roundaboutly,
I saved her life,
and she taught me
a lesson
about how much I can take:
infinite amounts,
but,
when it comes to watching others hurt,
like my mother,
I rise from the lie-down-and-take-it
position
real quick.
Details
His eyes are
so familiar, I see his history
in the white,
his misery
in the blue.
I know him so well
that sometimes looking at his face
feels like staring at a mirror.
His hands
brush my skin
unaware,
but his kiss
senses something
awry.
“What is it?”
“I don’t think we should—
I mean—”
(This is hard,
but I have to.)
“You & Me
is
over.”
(The silence lasts longer
than our relationship.)
“Because of that guy
who begged like a baby,
who you left
me to punish
for you?
Don’t pretend
like you didn’t
know,
like you didn’t
thank me
after.”
(Is that what I did?)
That is not what I did.
“It’s not him . . .”
(I make so much sense, I’m pretty sure I’m not me.)
“It’s me.
Your love,
though amazing,
feels too much like
pain. I can’t take
the—”
“I promise—never again.”
Promises.
“You can’t.”
I can.
“Please don’t.”
I do.
Break Up
So it’s weird
how you think
you want something
for a thousand years,
but how
when you get it,
it sucks.
There
All I do is stare.
There are tangles
in my hair.
I don’t care.
I go nowhere.
I can’t bear
to share
the air.
It isn’t fair.
Are you there?
I want to tear you
from my brain.
I want to be unaware.
Are you there?
Do you care?
Do you stare?
Do I Stare???!!!
Girl, I thrash.
I hurt.
I cut.
I use
booze and marijuana
ways to stop my mind
from flowing
in its natural
direction: to you.
You are unhealthy
for me
and all I want.
You are
the
nuclear bomb
that changed
everything
and then
vanished
into
a mushroom cloud.
What kills me
is how easily
you could take away
every ache—
You play
me with your stupid words
instead.
You are one beautiful demon.
Secret
I wish it didn’t have to be this way.
Is there something you can say
to make me stay?
Then say it,
please.
I don’t want to go.
13 Blocks
exactly—
from window to window,
door to door.
In 13 blocks,
19 minutes,
a right,
and a left,
I could be with you,
holding you,
even if
it’s only for old-time’s sake.
Between us
is a coffee shop,
a grocery store,
history, and
a snarl
of misunderstanding.
But when I think
of it as
13 blocks,
you don’t seem
so far away.
Get Back
She don’t even
come to the corner
where I anticipate
her
like a freak.
I know she needs me
as I need her.
I know if I could get
her out of my mind
and into my arms,
she’d relent.
I don’t know
who that beast was
that took me over,
my soul inheritance
from my father,
I suppose.
All those chicks
she hates
hate on me:
“What’d you do to my girl—
that she don’t come
down here anymore?”
I ignore them
—invisible as the buzz
of tired, fluorescent lights.
But Mary persists—
“She ain’t
that kind of girl, you know?
She ain’t the kind
you tap and forget—
She’s my friend.”
“Bitch, she is NOT
your friend.
You don’t even
know her.
She don’t even
like you
a little.”
For once in her life,
Mary is silent.
“She’s done with you,
isn’t she?”
I smoke.
“Done with all of us, most likely?”
I nod.
“Shit. That seems
about right,
don’t it?”
There,
now
Mary
understands.
“She was just
slumming with us,
huh?”
Private Caller
“Hello.”
His voice in the receiver
strokes some string
in my heart before
I realize it’s him
asking for
a reprieve—
“You can change your mind
before the sun comes up,
but just for tonight,
pretend I am
as good as
you want me to be.”
“Do you promise
you can control . . .
. . . it?”
“If I hurt you, I’ll shoot myself.”
Something about the
black of night
makes everything feel
like a fantasy
that doesn’t count
in real life.
I don’t even look
before I leap
from my window
to the porch roof
to the wet evening
grass. I listen to the
rhythm of my sneakers
pounding pavement,
practically running
to phantom him.
I get so excited as I walk
to the tree house,
but I also wonder what I’m doing
and if I’ll ever
go home
again.
This night’s
first sight
is different
from each
previous
meeting,
because
we have
all those
forever
feelings,
but just
one night
to feel
them.
We are intensified.
For a couple hours
we hug
and talk
as if we hardly know
the worst parts
of each other.
We pretend
like All Those Things
never happened.
We kiss.
His hands are as soft as water,
rinsing away shared memories
across my skin,
chasing them out
into the night.
It feels so good,
like a warm bed
on a cold morning,
like a perfect song
I overplayed
and forgot existed.
And that makes it so much harder
when I see the first hint
of lazy pink sunlight in the sky,
to put my
pants on,
and end this
dream
again.
But that’s the thing
about dreaming.
Eventually,
you have to
wake the hell up.
Gossip
Before he and I
spent all our days alone
together,
I used to spend them alone
by myself
with a book.
Now,
everywhere I go,
every book I open—
It’s like I’m living, but
without an essential organ:
for instance, my heart.
In the light of day,
it’s like
he’s vanished.
All that’s left of his ghost
is overheard conversations
about his supposed
goings-on.
Today, they say
he and Mary stayed at the corner
talking ’til 2, and then they
went out to the old tree house . . . and . . . and . . .
—I do the math—
That means he called me after
Mary & he
did
(Oh. My. God.)
it.
Why Her?
Man, it’s always the girl
you let creep closest
to your heart
who stabs you
in it.
That’s why I don’t usually
allow chicks
proximity
to my soft spots.
Yet,
he picked the chick
who would hurt the most
to screw
me with.
“Why her?”
“I don’t know. She was there.”
(Silence)
“I don’t mean it like that. I mean I didn’t mean to pick the chick who would hurt you most.”
“And how could you call
me
right
after?”
“Because.
Because . . .
Because—
Having her in my arms
was worse than being
alone—just made it that much
clearer that I don’t have you.
And I thought
I needed something,
but that
wasn’t what I needed
at a
ll.
I.
Need.
You.”
Apology
You know how I said
sex was sex
and
you
are special?
That wasn’t a lie.
She and I
were nothing
but sex,
and drugs,
and rock
and roll—
late-night
wishes,
and tree house
dreams.
You
and I
are
forever.
I Don’t Know Why
I go to the corner
tonight. Mary is there
to confirm
my worst nightmare
with sideways stares
and guilty smiles.
Sigh.
Eventually
I get up the nerve
to ask her
if it’s true.
“Did he sleep with you?”
And she tells me yes,
and how it wasn’t
the best. She says,
“Girl, you don’t know what you’re missing,”
as if sex is as
interchangeable as
fast food. You got to
try ’em all
to really know what you like.
I don’t know why
I ask her
for all
the sordid details.
I guess I’m like
those girls who cut,
except I like to
gash
my brain
with shards of reality.
That’s how I
remind myself
I’m alive
and life has meaning.
She tells me how his
fingertips felt
on her back,
and I have a sort of
metaphorical heart attack.
I step back
from the conversation
and can’t stop
watching her
descriptions
in my head.
“So you’re a thing
now?” I ask.
And she laughs.
“I hope he thinks so.”
She laughs.
“But girl, I was just
fooling around,
using him
for you.
Chicka, I was doing you a favor.”
I Admit It
We fit, Boy, we do.
I want you more
than heaven,
more than that happiness I had
when I was a kid,
but I can’t keep you
and respect myself.
Has Been
Girl,
this ain’t poetry;
it’s truth.
Always has been.
When you & me
are we,
we can
take this shitty world
right on. I can face the
assholery
(your word I love).
Now that you and me
are kaput,
I screw, I drink, I write
to escape—
I fight, too.
And even that
reminds me of
you.
You are everything.
Everyone else is disposable.
I am a mess.
Come back and make me right.
Even Mothers Make Sense Once in a While
The ground shakes as she vacuums.
Light erupts like lava when the curtains open.
Suddenly a divine spirit speaks
through my mother. (It’s the only
plausible explanation.)
“I don’t want
The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl & Random Boy Page 9
