VALENTINE SWEET CROSSES AT THE MOUTH OF THE HIGHWAY
High school feels overgrown and unsteady. A doggy pants in the car window,
and so many things are on their way to me. I put my hair up and
expect a halo. I’m here now, and for what it’s worth when I open the window I feel like I fit
within. I see numbers growing brightly, a catch in my breath as I spy a little lucky patch of
clovers. Spotted and friendly.
Nothing is a waste! I’m cooking rice and juggling so much within the palms of my head.
A plush membrane unfolds like the tongue of a pearls within. Do you go to school? Normal
right, like a normal person? Do you know where you’re going? Do you think yourself deserving
or did you fit yourself inside their pocket lining, soft and sighing in a tone only sweethearts hear.
This guy sits at the head of the table and has the nerve to tell me that he misses his little
home made in mud. In a way that feels like:
I miss it when the women wore their red little checkered aprons and would
lay down their life on the nearby bus stop for his skin. You miss when
they would wiggle and blush, as you threw a window at an old car. Beer
collects in pools of sweat, a smashed bottle and pleading. She knows this
because she’s heard this before. Not all papa’s are like sweat and stingy
breath filled of onion and tomato, but sometimes the world feels too small
and when you break a mirror for a glass shard it feels like you can do
anything. Now, in case anyone gets too close, I shape my eyes like
daggers and turn my head quick.
I check all around me, and sometimes the shuffling footsteps soft—
of my shadow on bare winter flora frightens me. Usually I’m the one
who strays, and if anything, I’d at least like to get too close to the sun.
You point your fingers to the sun, quick, before it sets!
