i like names that are real words,
english words like brown or smith or brook
and i like hardware stores with paint chips in the windows
and i like crooked noses and smiling eyes and plastic bottles

insignificant is what you said you were
it’s what you said it was to make applesauce
for a latke party, because what does it matter
to make a meal or a statement it’s all
so small compared to everything else so
insignificant

but it isn’t, i like streetlamps and the way they backlight
branches and i like the trees that still have leaves in december
and i like having nowhere to go
and everywhere
and it’s not insignificant
it’s not

i can’t help but remember all the things you taught me—
how to drink to excess and wake up smiling, how
to cook rice, and where the train is—now
as you lie sideways on the couch,
listing baby names with a cracking voice

cecelia sounds all right

there’s only the pursuit of a good story and good stories always have tears on grass
and on chests i was the professional and you were the amateur the good story
was always at my fingertips i could teach you how to cry

you, i don’t know i want your story, i think  i want your chin against my forehead
and i want your casual quiet accolades i don’t want to teach you how stories go

you’re pushing up against your five year reunion i’m pushing up against the space
where i choose where this is going this is going to your five year reunion this is going
to hell and you would listen to everything i could teach you i could break you with
your permission, of course

you’re wrong about one thing i can’t take secrets with me very far and i’ve lost
the line between what is and isn’t part of the original script you’re pushing up against
your five year reunion i’m pushing up against the only thing i know

this is an invitation to act rashly
I close my fists, full of imagined marbles
as big as your big hands and hot to touch

I imagine sitting cross-legged on his floor
we are in front of his salmon couch
on the frayed area rug I imagine he has
I imagine he has mismatched dressers

I don’t know why I imagine us on the floor
his couch is probably softer than it looks
sometimes they sit on the floor
in the movies
maybe we didn’t want pizza grease on the furniture

our knees touch, I imagine, indian style
unmoving
we exchange embarrassing **** we wrote in college
I think how college was earlier for him than for me
how while he was losing his virginity I was
bussing back from a jv tennis match

I imagine him laughing at a word in my poem
I defend my phrase, lunging then lounging on his quadricep
he’s showing teeth and crinkly eyes, putting
his hand on my forearm draped on his leg

he thinks the phrase is cute, actually, and so human
I imaging smiling back and we’re looking at each other for a little
too long and the air is electric in the way it gets when there’s
poetry in it and teeth showing and skin touching and we are
very close to one another, I imagine

I can’t stop imagining
I unclench my fists
quietly drop the marbles
this is an invitation to
act rashly

I turn to you and tell you I’m having
a really nice time

your pulse has been steady for ages now
and you only cry at shakespeare— never at your frailty
you’re not frail

tonight, when the door locks behind you
and you jiggle the doorknob; you
pound the glass and nobody hears you
not one soul

panic rises, boils in your ribs
and you think well hey
at least only security guards
will see me like this

they tell you that you can’t go home
bound by street lamps calculus and city boys
you are wearing a blazer as we speak and
your prom queen’s popping out another
forgettable night bearing down on you where
your streets aren’t made of cobblestone and
everybody talks like each other
and you can’t go home maybe but
you can’t stay either

I said I wasn’t gonna write another poem about hometown
stars and hooded sweatshirts and how life was a little warmer
when your thin fingers were on the steering wheel of that
**** station wagon or when they brushed up against mine

I said I was bigger than that now and I didn’t miss you anymore
and my own car didn’t stall at stop signs anymore and I didn’t
have a bonfire in my ventricles anymore cause I didn’t hear your
name much anymore, not these days

and I said I could barely even remember the time I promised
to never forget you and wasn’t that just the way it always goes
but now I’m here and small under the stars and awnings of our
dusty hometown and it’s still warm without you and I don’t
know how it ever got to be like that

and I do remember
and I wrote you this