A late April day
and it’s sunny outside,
a red little girl’s at the top of the slide
and an orange old man at the bottom
wants to take her
for a ride…

That sweet honey sunlight smell sticks
to sidewalk cracks this morning, and
awning tops cup warm clouds
of frying animal fat as I walk home,
and I don’t think of you much anymore, but today

today that old way you drew up eyelids like
bleached bamboo window shades
mantle-cradles me on this sidewalk
somewhere in New York City.

We were only thirteen at that beginning,
and you wore brown suede boots while we
puddle jumped our way through indiscretion,
rendered lips into rain swollen fisherman’s knots in fresh caught kisses,
kettle-steamed the incoming preadolescent orgasms
with “doctor” taking on a different name,

but
the ecstasy of each hindrance stripped down to the
bare, brittle olive of your underlayers

grew solemn with the hidden bloomings you were excusing,
and your inner thighs smelled discreetly like something
that told you to keep your door cracked
fan on, watch the rusty shadow of suburban hallway lust creak
open at night like
something
you had to call ‘daddy’ when the dawn broke.


some mornings, I remember, you would
pick up from our rumpling sheets,
catching in crumpled clothing
the quiet tick of soft hours, trying to keep me
asleep with clock hands closing in on 4,
I liked to picture you
Ordering cups of coffee in all night cafes on off hours, your shoes
Tapping out rhythmic conversation substitutes
On the foot of the booth like
Company.
In redefining virginity in each other’s
open wounds, intimacy was a lot like knowing
how we’d both known men like eager scissors on paper snowflakes
rudder running, slicing up, through, then in, in
and “intake” again just to wrap up, pull out, and say, “I’m sorry baby:
I just wanted to take some of that
plump round clean wholesome
with me, and maybe
I got carried away.

but when you’d unfold sometimes I see the way your white, mirroring six sides
harbor so many holes your shoulders bend in,
and you’re still scotch taping parts of you back together again
after those over enthusiastic scissor men
left you playing me songs like

A late april day
and it’s sunny outside,
a red little girl’s at the top of the slide
and an orange old man at the bottom
wants to take her
for a ride…

That sweet honey sunlight smell sticks
to sidewalk cracks this morning, and
awning tops cup warm clouds
of frying animal fat as I walk home,
and I don’t think of you much anymore, but today

today that old way you drew up eyelids like
bleached bamboo window shades
mantle-cradles me on this sidewalk
somewhere in New York City.

And I wish you luck.