him.

 

i had a dream about him last night,

he was sweet and charming and

took me to an aquarium,

i woke up in a cold sweat,

i could almost feel his hands on me.

 

her.

 

i dream about her often,

about how we could have been,

about how happy we were,

or at least how happy i thought we were,

the dreams don't ever end well,

i guess even asleep i can't forget.

 

them.

 

i don't dream about them very much anymore,

i guess i've tried to forget how much they meant to me,

how in love they were with me and how in love i was with them,

but it's okay, because i don't think they care anymore,

they don't text back, even in my dreams.

 

you.

 

i wish i dreamt about you more,

but then i'd have to wake up without you,

and that would hurt infinitely more than dreaming about him, or her, or them.

 

background characters.

 

there's a score of background characters in my dreams,

who sometimes take center stage,

my old town, an old best friend, etcetera,

people and memories who mean the world but hurt me too much to dream about too often,

and i'm grateful that on some level, my subconscious knows that.

 

walls.

 

i am twelve and he is fifteen and we both go to the same school,

his little sister is in my little sister’s class and we become that kind of ships in the night friendly only older siblings know.

i live in a quiet, half-abandoned street and he lives in a walled community with a guard at the gate,

his house is big and lights up the night and mine is dark and cold.

i am younger and naïve and he is older and dashing,

his coffee eyes are cold and pierce my bronze skin with startling ease.

i am hungry for affection and validation and he is hungry for a girl he can use and toss away,

his words of sleazy comfort are an exchange for my pliable morals.

i am easily influenced, and he is calculating,

his empty promises echoing in my dependent mind.

i am twelve and he is fifteen,

and four years later i am sixteen and he is nineteen,

and it still hurts like it was yesterday.

 

first love.

 

the first girl i loved had green eyes like a forest,

and she had beautiful hair which distracted me all the way from deuteronomy to revelations in our seventh period christology class

i didn't love her at first, and i don't think she loved me at first,

but i know she loved me when we kissed for the first time in the corner of the bustling dismissal bell hallway of our catholic school

i don't know when i fell out of love with her,

but i know i didn't love her when she destroyed my friend’s life at a drunken one-night-stand of questionable consent

the first girl i loved had green eyes like a forest,

and her beautiful hair didn't distract me anymore when we said goodbye for the last time years later in a busy hallway three floors down from that christology class

it was still beautiful,

but now it was just hair,

and deuteronomy and revelations were just chapters in a book.

 

i miss you.

 

you make my heart hurt

all i want is to feel you next to me

run my fingers through your hair

and listen to you breathe.  

 

let go.

 

my mom told me to try and forget about them,

realize that there's always going to be people who hate me,

but she doesn't know what it's like to have to smile at them,

to have to pretend that nothing's wrong so no one asks questions,

to just act like i didn't get my heart broken too.

my mom told me to try to let go of the past

but i can't.

 

all the better.

 

he's a wolf, and i am his red riding hood.

send me a picture of you at the beach,

he says, and i gasp.

my heart beats in my throat, not out of fear, but excitement.

okay,

i say, and smile uncontrollably.

i have no way of seeing past his sheep’s costume.

hurry up,

he says, and i wonder why.

i guess i thought that this was love,

when really it's lust,

his drooling jaws snapping up my red riding hood cloak.

 

read 9:07 pm.

 

it's a really weird feeling to know that i trusted him (my best friend) with everything.

but now that i think about it he didn't trust me back,

never told me anything he didn't tell everyone else.

i guess i can see why all of our old friends distanced themselves from him, or tried to

(“i'll bomb the school” “i want to kill that bitch”)

and now he spends his days fiddling with wires and spreading lies about you and me

to our friends, to his family, to anyone who will listen

i'd talk to him and apologize for whatever it is i did

but he left me on read

at 9:07 pm.

 

boys.

 

she kissed me with an innocent laugh,

pulling me in and making me blush,

but i don't think he made her blush,

and her laugh wasn't as innocent.

 

sunshine meadows.

 

the heat index today is one hundred degrees,

and the freckles on emily braverman’s face are sparkling with a mixture of sweat and laughter.

we ride together, the two of us and our equine companions,

taking breaks to watch marlyn zerboch school a green pony two rings over.

after we finish with our work,

the warmth is too much for us and we, and marlyn, lean on the comforting cool of the wet wash stall’s wood and talk about nothing.

it's simple, and as close to perfect as life gets,

me, marlyn, and emily drinking water out of careworn camelbaks and complaining about the heat.

 

long distance.

 

i hate forgetting you

i can call you every day but i'm still forgetting the exact cadence of your voice

how it rises and falls minutely with your breath and mood

how it halts when you've thought of a funny joke

it's like how

i can facetime you every day but i'm still forgetting precisely how you smile

how the corners of your mouth crinkle when you see something you love

how it differs when you're laughing or when you're petting a dog

or like how

i can see you on my phone background every day but i'm still forgetting how you look and feel

how your hand fits perfectly in mine

how you felt when you kissed me goodbye

even though i know you're there i'm afraid you'll disappear—

or that you're forgetting me

in the fog of one thousand, three hundred, and seventy miles.

 

daddy issues.

 

he wasn’t absent, per se

he came up on weekends sometimes

paid our tuition and my mother’s medical bills

but he didn't make us pancakes in the mornings

or kiss my mother goodbye

or teach my brother how to button up a collared shirt

nothing more than was necessary.

 

june fifth, 2016.

 

i don't know what i did,

how i hurt them

they seemed so fine when we last spoke,

but now they won't text me back.

we used to love each other

but i guess i did something to hurt them,

because now they won't text me back

and i guess i'll never know what i did,

how i hurt them.

 

drowning.

 

i have this fear that you only love me because you're bored

that i'm just a distraction

entertainment

and that one day i'll wake up and you'll have found a new distraction

and i'll just slip into the background again

put another notch of an unraveled relationship on my belt

and cry,

because i'll love you no matter what

and hopefully you'll at least love me enough to tell me if/when you don't.

 

je me souviens.

 

i forget, sometimes

how my mother's voice sounded on the phone to my father all those years ago

her breath catching on tears and voice breaking over sobs

but then he does something small

forgets his anniversary or forgets to come home

and i hear her voice break again

hear her breath catch again

and i remember.

 

washington township, new jersey.

 

my great-uncle stands in his driveway,

pollen falling around him like snow,

he carries the entire weight of italian brooklyn on his back,

shoulders slouched,

back hunched,

walking into his complex with an air of quiet energy,

eyes glinting in the early june sunset.

 

spqr.

 

i know it's not rational,

and that i shouldn't be the jealous type

because i've always been the other woman to a man’s pretty girl,

but i couldn't stop thinking today about that pretty girl you mentioned

the “white wellesley girl” my san francisco forerunners would scoff at

but who you thought was captivating.

and so now you know what i am

(the jealous type)

(the other woman)

i hope you know how much it scares me

knowing that there's a girl out there

who can give you all the things i can't,

(money)

(intelligence)

and i hope you will still love me even though i'm not a pretty white wellesley girl who likes latin and the woods

and has spqr tattooed on her arm

because i'm not that—

(pretty?)

(multicolored)

(state school)

(girl?)

and i hope the black triangle on my hip

(the mark of the jewess)

(the mark of the asocial woman)

(the mark of the atypical)

is enough to make you stay.

 

thirteen.

 

her hand is intertwined with mine

on the bleachers of the gym

but gone when the girls from english class say hello

i am too dangerous to be seen with.

 

her eyes are locked with mine

on the counter of the school bathroom

sharing stories and laughter

but gone when the bathroom door swings open

i am illegal, a liability.

 

her breathing is synced with mine

on the cold tile floor

my head between her legs

what she wanted

but gone when i lift up

i am used and now useless.

 

thirteen and already broken.

 

royal palm.

 

when i was twelve my mother lived in a small house in much too nice of a neighborhood for my siblings and i, all of us loud, grass stained, rough around the edges

but it was nice to play rich people even though we didn't have our neighbors’ beautifully hydrated lawns or high, thick hedges

until we could only afford to send my mother to school and we all dropped out and my mother started to make the hour commute into the city alone

and my mom’s temper rose with the florida temperatures, with her exponentifying medical issues, with her ever-increasing student loans

every night we could stay awake long enough for her grey sedan to pull into the driveway she’d find another thing to demean

big things, my sister failing out of her online sixth grade; little things, my love for boyish blue jeans

i don't blame her, though,

our neighbors turned up their noses at us until we left.

 

sting ray.

 

i still remember their hand in mine at the aquarium as we meandered through the exhibits,

they weren't tall enough to stretch their hand into the sting ray touch tank, but i was.

my mother told me to be careful that day,

don't let anyone see you together,

don't let their mom ask questions,

be careful.

i was a secret,

their little rebellion,

i'm sure they would have hated me if they were being honest with themselves.

i didn't get stung by the sting ray but i kind of wish i had,

maybe i could’ve realized that they never reached for my hand first.

 

2013.

 

i wore a blue v-neck t-shirt to his house to pick up my sister from her play date with his sister that summer night,

felt his eyes on me,

hungry,

roving,

and blushed the whole way back to my mom’s house.

my flip phone lit up with texts from him that night

i knew what he was doing was wrong

he had a girlfriend,

he was three years older than me,

etcetera.

but he was so persistent

and i couldn't say no to him

i couldn't stop him

i wished i could.

but i never did

he grew bored of me and i went back to being the reject,

the other woman,

the slut,

a little more broken than i was before

because no matter how hard i try i can't forget him

and every time i hear you say you love me paranoia bubbles up in my throat and i hear him

telling me i'm just the other woman

just the slut.

and every time i hear that it gets harder to believe you love me

because i believed him.

 

warm.

 

my head on your shoulder

your hand in mine.

bad tv on

tinny sound through the speaker.

 

cold.

 

her hand on my leg

roving upward.

quick breathing

my fear, her excitement.

 

jackson square.

 

my mother is a mule driver,

down at jackson square,

picks up tourists, drops off tourists,

down at jackson square.

your mother is in banking,

and she looks down on mules,

and your father stays at home and cooks,

and he looks down on mules.

i want to be good for you

and worthy of your time,

but i don't think your mother thinks i am

worthy of your time.

because i have a broken home,

glued back in jigsaw pieces,

because my mother has a mashed-up brain,

glued back in jigsaw pieces.

i only want to be a horse,

and not a donkey or a mule,

because we all know it's horses that help the hero get the girl,

not a donkey or a mule.

but my mother’s still a mule driver,

down at jackson square,

and i'm still the child of a mule driver,

down at jackson square,

and i'll always be proud to be the child of a mule driver,

as long as my mother works down at jackson square.

 

coping.

 

sometimes

(when i’m feeling hopeless)

i look for apartments online

(montréal, one bedroom, lowest to highest)

to remind myself that i have something to look forward to

(waking up together).

 

banana pancakes.

 

i wish i could stop tasting my father in chocolate-chip pancakes

but i can’t.

 

all i can taste in the aunt jemina’s and nestle is him

and mom, and the kids,

all of us awake on a saturday morning

happy.

 

all i can taste

is how bittersweet the chocolate was

and how he smiled at mom

lovingly.

 

all i can taste

is jack johnson playing on mom’s computer

and the kids fighting over the maple syrup

laughing.

 

all i can taste

is the precision in which he timed the pancake’s flip

something i could never master

unattainable.

 

all i can taste

is how much i miss that warmth and happiness

because he doesn’t make chocolate chip pancakes

anymore.

 

lipstick.

 

i sometimes wonder why she loved me and my red lipstick

why i made her nervous

i can’t remember the way her voice would sound

or the way that she would walk

but i can remember my red lipstick

smudged on her lips

and then, later, neatly applied

as she dyed her hair black

and filled in her eyebrows

becoming a funhouse reflection of me

 

i can’t remember the way she would laugh

or the way that she would hold my hand

but i can remember my red lipstick

on my lips as i saw her with him across the room

and then, later, smudged on his lips

her promise to me broken over a man

my trust for her shattered

and my heart broken

all over a man who would never make her nervous

 

i can’t remember the way she would say she loved me

or the way her handwriting would look

but i can remember my red lipstick

smudged on her shot glass

and then, later, on my best friend’s neck

as well as the tears the morning after

when she realized what had happened,

ruined a life in the process of destroying her own

a foggy recollection of events determining both their futures

 

i sometimes wonder why i loved her and her (my) red lipstick

and then i remember

i don’t.

 

eighty nine degrees.

 

it's sunny outside

rays beating down on my back, bouncing off the water

making the golden-grey sand crystalline and scorching

my camelbak sweats off a veritable sea

far down the shoreline, a thunderstorm speaks in pure white, godly bolts

the same color as the breaking waves on the shore curling over a mere inch of sand before crashing down into a feather-thin prism carpeting the earth for only a moment

the dark of the rain clouds mirroring the light of the undulating ocean.

 

stars.

 

i was always afraid of the stars

afraid of the endless expanse in front of me, spiraling down into infinity

but now they're the only thing connecting us across this huge, silent, appalachian expanse

and i have never been more grateful for them.

 

rainstorm.

 

the warning comes in the form of a far off rumble rolling over the everglades,

the emergency bell in the form of the downpour’s rat-a-tat-a on the sheet metal roofs of the barns closer to the swamp.

our boss shouts a cautionary command across the rings

get back to the barn, it's dangerous.

marlyn and i glance at the oncoming cloud, then at each other;

we slip into the pack of horses and riders on their way back to the safety of the barn.

it's a little moment of magic,

fox’s hooves barely brush the ground as he and lovie toss their heads nervously,

rain begins to clatter on marlyn and i’s helmets,

and i feel an overwhelming sense of belonging,

of knowing exactly what to do

when the warning comes.

 

knowing.

 

we talked for a while yesterday, me and sydney,

about a lot of things but what stuck out was her talking about them,

how i hurt them,

how she knows they hurt me.

we talked for a while yesterday, me and sydney,

and now i realize,

they were bad for me,

i was bad for them,

and it hurts a little less to finally know.

 

prismatic.

 

i’m not colorblind, but

when i was a child my vision was so poor that learning from flashcards what “blue” and “grey” were was useless.

so now it's hard for me to tell colors apart, kind of like

how, metaphorically speaking, some people are at a loss as to how to differentiate the color of a laugh from discomfort, or of

a smile from pain, or of

happiness from tears.

but you are different, and i guess that's why

i fell in love with you, because

you're the only person who sees life in full color.

 

growing up.

 

walking down the hallways of my old high school in search of my conductor is surreal,

passing people i used to sit next to in sixth period geography or second period english and realizing that they don't remember me,

passing tiny eighth graders who probably knew my younger sister at some point,

passing teachers who taught who i was then,

i am unrecognizable to them now,

a person who has given up on calling those hallways home,

who has moved on.

 

butterflies.

 

knowing i'm about to see you/talk to you/etcetera is the most interesting feeling

like being nervous before you go on a roller coaster,

except i'm not nervous,

i'm happy

and that shocks my system from head to toe,

rushing thoughts/butterflies in my stomach/big smile/etcetera

it's not that i've never been happy before,

i have,

but you make me feel

a new kind of happy.

 

full circle.

 

the late sun glints under the shades,

dust in the air turning iridescent.

you play a song that he used to play for me,

that he said he'd like to hear on me,

and i shudder, like i always do,

you notice, and kiss my cheek.

your brown hair becomes kaleidoscopic in the light,

transforming into liquid gold.

you talk about me meeting your grandmother,

i was a secret of theirs,

but a part of you,

you carry on talking and squeeze my hand.

you say you love me,

and it’s not like how she said it,

i know you’re more than temporary,

and i’m your one and only.

my dreams are never as happy as i am now,

in the warm glow of the sunset,

with you.