no, the first kiss didn’t matter.
hardly remembered, really.
some boy in kindergarten or first grade,
lip-smackers and vaseline,
maybe a playground, under the risers at lunch.
but i remember the first time my second nature,
my sloppy flirtations,
threaded a boy’s oblivion.
side-swiped a consciousness.
the orange lamplight on washington street during kick the can.
my dad’s best friend’s son.
shaggy hair, glasses too big for his face,
and what my memory only hopes could be a navy member’s only jacket.
follow an inched finger behind an oak tree.
the first rattling behind my knees.
the solid tangibility of friction and awkwardness
of meaning and futures exchanged like a snap.
and later, when i was caught with horrible high school boys,
i would hold out for the one with streetside kisses.
there would be no background music, no island or beach, no starry skies.
but there was an awful teen sitcom, a basement clammy and mildewy,
a scratchy plaid couch, and the cool slip of a polyester sleeping bag.
i mouthed questions to the ceiling panels
about the inexplicable way the fibers didn’t melt on his skin
when his shoulder was on my neck–
my skin warmed at that return of the rattling in my knees.
this first, i will remember.
hold his picture in the light and tell him he has the same beard as Jesus.
will replace praying hands on a wall with fingerprints and palm sweat.
try to forget the ankle bracelet. or maybe even his extra long pinky nail.
will roll the bolder over the mouth of the cave.
i ache for grey and red striped sweaters, and i get sunken sockets instead.
someday i’ll pour intention into actions and gifts,
maybe even pills and poppers and plastic solo cups.
but right then, i didn’t know this.
and the rattling behind my kneecaps is stinging.
no astringent is strong enough to erase the last night.
the secret night walk to the house with the closed bedroom door
in the back….
where the steel and spoons
spoke more truths than my thighs.
here, the cancer begins.
someplace between liver and spleen and spine, coffee and cigarettes,
playlists and poems, and numbness and scorn….
the roots are secured in blood and bone,
filter through what should have been and what was.
the graduation and the reunion.
the recovery and sobriety.
california and dark-haired babies.
but right now, i feed the tumor with photos and ink,
at night, drive the praying hands to the church drop box.
when it chimes off-key harmonies, ask forgiveness from a god i turned away from years before.
swallow martyrdom with a nervous chuckle.
each turned back feeds the metastasis.
there are pictures, sulfur clinging longer than the smiles,
love notes and drawings on denny’s napkins,
and textbooks marbled with cursive incantations of possible names of unborn babies.
i learn bottled cologne on sticky skin never
scents skin like the earthiness of when our two collarbones collided.
the jersey sheets documented when my tongue was sweet and metallic,
but this cancer is feeding on my breath,
consuming all oxygen in sucked-in sighs.
when i saw him on holiday break,
we were cordial.
nerves washed like a tsunami, he is brother,
he is friend.
he was lover.
share a smoke and a smile.
maybe even coffee, but he’s got curfew.
and sobriety.
and i am 18, stringy spaghetti limbs, sunken eyes,
the buzzing filament of a nearly-burned light bulb,
an ache that hurts to stand near.
i tell stories, trying to tempt the boulder from inside the cave.
i am thirsty for his musk, and forgiveness, camaraderie,
and washington street, and poems, and agreements,
and allowances. and washington street, and oversized glasses,
and sleeping bags.
i am a used notebook, spiral unbinding, coffee-stained,
a hornet’s nest in the attic, a 6th-floor screen imprint on fingertips,
sprawled and praying,
one fabulous mesmerizing clusterfuck.
but my skin is pocked, and weathered.
he saves my life in a sentence.
“stick to your club drugs–don’t mess with the hard stuff.”
a hug and goodbye,
his pea coat is scratchy like the plaid couch,
and i smirk to myself.
hug this to the hollow cancer growing behind my breastplate,
feed this moment to the roots.
my buick rolls off the gravel parking lot,
and i’ll sample this night with a few others,
replay it like a broken record,
want to shape the shine to quaint perfection.
but it is shredded wheat stabbed into mushy pulp.
and the rattling behind my knees is now a dull thud.
solid and silent.
the time was irrelevant, but i remember it was morning and probably a sunday.
i should have been sleeping or heading to church,
but i never was That Girl.
gray snow melting outside, overcast, and just the way
you’d want it when you get that call.
i’ve heard the pattern too many times.
the first w’s sucked-in shrill and squat demand,
the “how” already sorted before the lungs exhale.
the matter as irrelevant in the moment the sound turned off,
the talking muted, and the ringing, the fucking ringing
like the low bellow of a metal cross on donation bin,
and the lightness of a body.
the lightness of a body.
the lightness of a body.
the lightness of my body.
the awkward threading of a girl’s sideswiped oblivion by
a boy’s sloppy flirtation with a spoon.
i don’t remember going outside to smoke,
but i remember the calm and emptiness of the campus.
i wanted people to gather in a group.
to listen to me testify the sharp corners of his lessons,
to shake my fist and ask for sunlight or thunderstorms,
to slap god for irony–
he was addict. i was addict.
he was sober, i was still a junkie,
instead, i stood atop the forced-round corners of college benches,
dipped my toe with each step,
and felt the rattling of my knee caps,
the weight lifted from my legs,
and settled into the growing cancer in my belly.
