Strangers
it’s not that love’s coming
it comes when it comes
I am close to someone, close as a lover
we stand in line at this bookstore
he touches her arm with his thumb,
I am within inches of them or less
strange, he does not brush me
does not intertwine in the least
our hearts, too, immeasurably near
not strange, the distance
normal, no more than I want to wait
longer in line, I liked seeing her
skin clean itself with dust, her hair
fall irrelevant near his stroke,
the clerk checked out suddenly
yet by the time their turn comes,
and mine, I loved them the way
a piece of skin stretches to close a wound
finishing off the wayward vessels perfectly
Early On
The sun came up, kicked, laughed at us
while I got dressed in jeans,
a short-sleeved white shirt (not rolled), two shoes,
a blue and white choker, a house of fire,
not much for the sun watching us go, after all.
Still enough to cover ourselves for the morning roll
in the hay, a quick spin on Lincoln Drive,
the rest of the day open and clean, no work planned
but a bit of discussion on tomorrow’s events
our blue sheets rolled up in the back, a picnic
for the sun on the loose if we ever stopped walking.
We walked right past history, its rude smell
that wipes the mind clean with details
we recount in small words, a shrug of
each other, the miraculous misunderstanding.
Growing Up Big
Yes, I’ve been bad. Last night in the halls
while the red Santa stood at the door
and Punch and Judy lay on the floor
of the broken-down theater, yes,
I heard the voices telling me to stop
this kind of thing with you, who took
me with you. I’ve heard this before
the voices crawling up the stairs
as I debated in the bathtub the seriousness
of my decisions.
That day you asked:
we knew little, thick January, what it
would bring, your mother’s yellow ring
falling onto my hand, Thursday, three
days from Sunday, a hundred miles from
New York, years from where we’d stood,
cold, my hand on your wing, tucked inside
your plaid shirt, one for flying over my
cold body when we took our shoes off and ran
away from the folds the winds the muck:
it’s this I want everyone to hear, of being that girl,
though I don’t mind at all curling up small sometimes.