I remember the day you showed up at the bus
stop:
quiet, pale, a thick veil of dark hair, we
stared
at each other through overgrown bangs. We were
just
beginning our dry sentences at Baldi Middle
School.
In those days, our jeans would be tattooed
weekly
with the coded names of every boy who flicked
his eyes our way. The backs of our hands became
necks and lips for practicing on. I once even
doused my backpack with my brother’s cologne,
a sad effort to at least smell like I’d had a
boyfriend.
Walking around your housing complex, we’d stare
through the windshields of every man who drove
by.
We thought of our bodies as dangerous chemicals,
our breasts as match tips waiting for love’s
flinty gaze
We were sure all the boys around had firecracker
hearts
just waiting to explode. And look, I know I know
I know
I am not telling the whole truth. Things in your
house
were different, were not right, were accepted
because
maybe no one knew any better, or maybe they did
and didn’t care. And whenever the whole dark
truth
would spill out, I remember I’d gather my
features
into the center of my face, unable to figure out
the right combination for my concern, for fresh
alarm.
I’d forget how to sit, how to blink, breathe.
It’s true,
sometimes you look back and all the things
you should have done rise up like volcanic
islands,
whole civilizations, whole existences, whole
lifetimes.
But what did we know then? Fourteen, I took
the hammer of my dumb tongue and tried to tap
comfort into your impossibly small ears,
your impossibly small fists. We were kids,
and the future was our dependable escape plan.
We’d be gone soon, so you had just better suffer
through
it all now. We’d be gone, so until then, I tried
to make you laugh. I’m sorry I never realized
I could’ve unlocked your exit earlier, that I
could’ve released your story from the shogun
of my own throat. The letters you send me now
are like postcards from that hopeful future:
you are okay, you are alright, with no return
address.
So this poem is a telegram to let you know that
I still think about you, that I’m still proud of
you,
that when I remember you, I always remember you
as beautiful.