2009 or, A Study in Confusing Uses of You.

Drinking beer with the boys on the porch, talking about babes and racial relations and fashion as evening slowly filled in the shadows around us.

Opening an exam booklet and partway through realizing that I had only studied for half of the chapters tested.

Nights when my room got too hot and I slipped out of the window to ride my bike down silent streets. The eeriness of being able to bike straight down the middle of a road that bustles during the day.

Falling in love with a boy who smells like summer rain.

Blasting Springsteen and Denver, the road ahead black as flat Coke. Your feet in my lap because the ground was littered with empty cans. The mist lifting for our first view of the jagged shore, the sea tossing its hair like a girl vying for  attention.

The way your arm slid around my waist, your hand resting on the same spot on my hip every time.

My only memory of the fireworks your face in profile. The thud of every explosion like the beating of a heart.

Sitting on your lap no seatbelt the truck going thirty above the limit. Your fingers sneaking up to twine with mine. Thinking, I could die like this.

Waking up to you curled into the shape of a paper heart, folded in half.

Cocooned in a corner away from the bad music and girls dressed like penny-per-dance callgirls, texting cheap poetry into my cheap phone because I had long lost my pen.

Not knowing you were going back to Paris until you were halfway across the Atlantic.

Sitting with you by the river next to the graffiti and abandoned cranes, sharing a bottle of Scotch and watching the sun rise.

How we could only stand each other when drunk.

How you used to read poetry into my voice mail.

How I never realized how much I needed you until you were gone.

Looking for a partner in crime

No, really. I’ve been watching my Reservoir Dogs and Ocean’s Eleven. I’ve been planning my moves every time I put down my 1% milk and apples on the conveyor belt at Safeway. All I need is for a guy with a gun who’s got my back as I yell, “EVERYBODY PUT THEIR HANDS UP, THIS IS A HEIST!” Maybe afterwards we can even have drunken ski mask sex.

Apply with a picture of your tool. No, not that one.

014.

Someone sits alone in the back pew where Michael usually waits, his face soft around the cheeks and jaw but his dark eyes grave, the face of someone who has grown up too fast. There is singing in the background, subdued but high, yearning, Latin or some other long-dead language preserved for posterity.

“The one on the far right is free,” Michael says as he plops himself down.

He whirls to scan the row of confessionals before meeting Michael’s eyes and flushing. “Was it that obvious – ”

“I’m sorry,” Michael says at the same time. Up close, he looks around Michael’s age. “And I’m, um, Michael.”

“Ender,” and the singing suddenly raises goosebumps along his arms.

Sometimes I like to take pictures, too

010.

Let’s imagine that Michael never meets Ender. Let’s imagine that he gets married to his high school sweetheart and has two kids, a golden retriever, and a white picket fence. Let’s imagine that his biggest worry is whether his shirt matches his tie.

Let’s imagine Michael was never born.

Curtain Song

It’s a summer the colour of a Shirley Temple and the heat falls down in shards when Emmeline comes home.

“Hey,” he says when he sees her. His hair is leached at the tips and his neck and shoulders have crisped, but the helpless eloquence of his hands is the same, wicked sexy and slow like he doesn’t know it.

“Hey.”

“You look tired.”

“Markus is dead.”

“But you’ve come back.” His fingers brush gently over her collarbone. “That’s all that matters.”

Four Truths and a Lie

Every time I hear your voice I wonder how you sound in bed.

I never realized how beautiful you are until last night.

I miss the smell of your cigarettes.

I never remember my dreams, but I remember every dream I’ve had of you.

I think I’m in love, and it scares the hell out of me.

Seen From the Seventh Floor of the Loneliest Apartment in Brooklyn

Garden gnome
Frozen in rapture
As cherry blossoms fall

This is the top shelf of my bedside bookshelf

Missed Connections at the Convention

Curls and dark eyes, intense. You look down when you talk. Now I want to go to Florence where Michelangelo drew on the walls and to Sicily (the eccentric city, the dark city, the scarred city). I think I just like that you said, “It’s okay, I’m not going to judge, I’m an artist too” when I paused before telling you what I write about.

What I like about you is that I know how you see the world and I can play by those rules. Your eyes are very green and there’s a bit of a cleft on the tip of your nose; somehow it suits you.

I felt so bad for you. I really really hope everything works out for you and you turn into a super-successful tycoon or something.

You were so cute and serious. I hope my friend didn’t scare you too much. You don’t seem like a Patrick at all.

And you! I am a little in love with you. Everything from how you gesticulate to how soft your lips are from smiling to how you think; it’s a neat bundle. The first time I saw you I thought hockey player; I saw you getting off the bus, I saw your shaggy hair pressed flat by helmet, I saw you turning to a teammate panting, talking plays. It makes me so happy when my random mindthoughts are right. Junior B in Finland, that’s where the scars on your chin are from.

You made me feel lonely.