it’s 2007 and i think i know about nostalgia

my middle grade dimpled darling named tuesday

is dating our friend daniel / but that’s not really

the point here / the point is she is legs crossed

shimmer cleft twirling out adele’s hometown glory

on her sister’s guitar / we ain’t lost, just wandering /

so maybe we’re more than a little lost / but today

we ditch school when it hits more than

60°F on the coast / we run down the hill

to a cove called lovers point / (i don’t yet know

what it means to be a lover have a lover envy a lover

lose a lover i don’t yet know the point

or the pointed edge of love) /

we jump off the pier skinny jeans and all / so

later we ditch the boys daniel and andrew

and cram five not-quite-girlhood bodies

into an apartment bathtub / all razor-knicked knees

and self-conscious sonatas / starfish fingers

peeling the denim off each other’s driftwood

legs / as our childhood blue pirouettes

down the drain / petika goes to blockbuster

and sneaks us our first r-rated movie / and later

i’ll know my mom found out by an ear-ringing

angry phone call / but for now

our laughter sounds like the cowrie shells

i stuffed in my pocket / as i fall asleep to the lullaby

of the tides in lauren’s ribcage / this will be the day

i learn about the point of love /

the points of love that poke and prod

and sometimes love is jagged seaglass

and sailing away on your best friend’s chest /

and we didn’t even know / a decade

later we’d be back together at a graveyard

we never had to go to before /

for the funeral of the bear hug boy

whose outsized grin left bite marks on my chest /

tuesday hasn’t been home from england in five years

and she and daniel broke up a while ago and

she has a stronger accent now / i wonder

if she’s still singing / or if she grew out of that

too like the skinny jeans we left on the floor

in her seashell bathroom on lighthouse avenue /

which is not so far from andrew’s headstone /

which is also to say a lightyear away / from that day

on the pier when we held hands and jumped

into the icy water together / or were we pushed /

does it matter now / that he’s not here /

and we each carry our own container

of sand dollar memories no longer shared /

i plant a cowrie shell in his fresh dirt /

and cannot bring myself

to look back