We would sit on the steps of the porch
so the sun would warm our legs but spare our eyes.
She would peel potatoes and I would ask her,
where she got that scar
how many boyfriends she has had
how many bones she has broken
if her heart had ever been torn
and how many times and by who
and what was the worst cut she had ever had.
"I don't know Kels. That was all a long time ago."
That always seemed like ******* to me.
How could you not know many people
you have let touch your lips with theirs?
But then I grew.
I grew and I got scraped, and burned
and broken over and over.
I had my heart stolen
and I gave it away again and again.
Every experience just stacked against the other.
So I guess I kind of get what she was saying now.

You emailed me three times.
I ignored it.
I was thirteen and considered myself very busy.
Repeated empty and un-kept promises
Were my most recent words to you.
I would come by when I got a chance.
There was so much time,
I was just having trouble finding it lately.
I seem to have found the time.
But you aren’t going to email me back.

Not that anyone cares
Kelsey cut class again.
Probably out getting high
With her new stupid friends.

Not that anyone cares
But Kelsey likes to break glass.
She writes on the walls
And she’s waiting for the crash.

Not that anyone cares
But Kelsey snuck out her window,
Out to smash mailboxes
And let herself go.

Not that anyone cares
But Kelsey doesn't do well in school
She’s not perfect like them.
No straight A’s for this girl.

Not that anyone cares
No one listens to her, she’s not even there.
So go for it kid get drunk.
Life isn’t fair.

Not that anyone cares
But she’s always on the run.
Stop saying she’s like them
Her life has barely even begun.

Not that anyone cares,
But Kelsey is all alone.
She’s completely her own person.
Not even close to Regan’s clone.

Not that anyone cares,
But Kelsey cries every night.
She has terrible dreams
And just existing is a fight.

And not that you’ll listen
But she hates her life
And you can’t fix her with words.
So don’t waste your time.

People thought I moved there
To spend more time with my father
But I moved in to be alone.
So we were just alone together
In the skeleton of what used to
Be our happy family.
He would drink beer
And I would sit on the floor of my room.
He said good night to me every night.
And made me breakfast in the mornings.
Two eggs always. Never failed.
Half of the time I threw them away.
He never said anything when
I tracked in mud,
Or stayed out late.
And he never mowed the yard
Or cleaned the bathroom.
We never cleaned anything.
We never did anything.
Our family’s stuff was piled everywhere,
And they were everywhere but here.
I probably spoke twelve words that whole year.
When I moved out my father told me
He would miss me terribly.

The clock in my kitchen is five minutes slow.  
I laugh at it sometimes.
I sit in the rusty metal chair and stare at it;
listening for the sound that proves its short comings.
At the strike of the hour the grandfather clock
in the hall begins to chime.
It is one of those clocks that was
handpicked in the universe
to always have the correct time.
There are not many like this
but there must be a few
to keep our world turning.
My household has lived by this clock for years,
everything revolving around its eternal knowledge.
I laugh at the cheap, battery ran
clock on my kitchen wall.
It is nothing in comparison.
I hear the grandfather clock
beginning his five o’clock strokes.  
I stare at the clock on the wall.
Four forty-five.
  Today I don’t laugh, I cry.

The dirt road stained the car.
I normally drove but this time
she sat with her left foot curled beneath her.
Her free and bare foot barely touching the pedal.
Left arm dangling out the window,
while her right clung loosely to the wheel.
And she talked.
"That was the house my parents built.
My mom was supposed to get it but he kept it.
That is the church my dad was
going to marry her in.
But she's crazy, she'll never marry him.
This is the lake where I was going to build my
house when I grew up and married him.
But I didn't do that,
and it looks like someone bought it anyway."
And she laughed.
"This is where we always planned on skinny dipping.
But we were too scared until we were too old.
This is where my brother was supposed to marry my best friend.
But they are both on drugs now.
This is where he and I would swim and talk,
and he told me he would marry me.
I hear he is getting deployed to Texas
and that he got a tattoo across his shoulders."
Sometimes she would just drive,
Her eyes on something in the distance.
Because some of them weren't for me.
The place where she nearly drown.
The place her brother gave up on her.
When maybe she should have given up on him.
The last place she saw the first friend she ever had.
"Sometimes I think I should have stayed."
But she knows better.
And the gravel wound cornfields for miles.
And she talked,
and she laughed.

When did kissing you
become like putting my lips
to a cool glass of water on a hot day?
Natural and easy,
almost as though
I had never done it at all.
And when did running
my hands along your skin
begin to feel as though I were
clutching my own arms
to keep warm
on an unseasonably cool day?
At what point did it become less clear
where the lines of your shell end
and mine begin?
Was it when we first collided?
Or is this a fusion laced time?
Have I been classically conditioned
to confuse your body with mine?
How did we grow
from tentatively holding hands
to kissing thighs or spines
with no shiver of uncertainty?
How is it that
even when our embrace ends
I know we are still connected?
Locked together by some magnetic force.
A kiss our souls need no rest from.
How is it that I blended and melted
and molded into you?
And even more perplexing
when did this all begin?
Was is when? Was it when?