love for strange amateurs

1.

daisy chains, bacardi kisses, jameson kisses,

hornitos kisses—she had a problem.

i was a solution fashioned out of ribbons

and pure silky teenaged fear,

an argumentative blessing for a freudian

princess, queen anne’s lace, queen of lace,

self-diagnosis,

body issues and binge drinking.

razor blades hidden,

bottles glinting on the mantelpiece,

i posed, preened, inhabiting her photographs

the way a parasite or ghost

inhabits a human body: hungry, divinely

incompatible. i kept her father’s turtleneck,

the cat, sexual apprehension, a polaroid

she took—me in a dress, washing dishes

in the bathroom sink—but left the savior

complex at the state border.

-

2.

his fingers long for cigarettes

and blunts, resting on the steering wheel

of that busted white sedan.

i heard he was a creep,

heard he wasn’t, made him into my only friend.

he was thirty-seven, i was nineteen and gouging

the wound, prophesying, poeticizing

his specific awkward beauty. i have always

built monuments to other people’s misery.

i should have kissed him in the parking lot

of that norm’s at 4 am, touched the frail bones

and ligaments, eaten our weird intimacy

with every kind of tooth.

instead: dog walks, burnt seaside,

who’s devil? who’s advocate?

he never asked me for any

of the things i made him want,

just picked me up, dropped me off.

-

3.

we packed everything we owned

into the car that died in the hotel parking lot

the day we arrived. frostbite, period

stains, dinner plates in our laps.

he was never more my boyfriend

than brother in arms.

i wouldn’t let him cut his hair

or speak. we raised each other

on cartons of eggs, pots of coffee, shared

shirts, individual fears. i cried into his eyes

until he learned how.

he poured the water on which i walked,

built me a bookshelf, built me a home

i couldn’t live in. the red truck,

campfire stink, blood and guts of the work

week. i should have bought him dresses

sooner. he was never more brother

to me than sister.

-

may, 2018