when i walk into the bathroom, with dawn
breaking her fingers to squeeze her hands through the windows
at the end of the hall, i am surprised to see a girl at the corner sink.
i expected to be alone to wipe at my face, to press gentle fingers
against the tender skin of my neck, to pull up my shirt
and check the visibility of my ribs
and the flutter of my heart, to stare at my eyes in the ****** mirror
in the ****** lighting and calculate all the little changes that a boy’s hands
can wreak on a body in under an hour. but she
is there at the corner sink, scrubbing at her red and irritated cheeks
like she is lady macbeth trying to erase the ghost of a touch
that never left a physical mark. i have makeup and sweat sticking
to my skin and knots in my hair desperate fingers left behind
and i’m not sure my shirt is my shirt and i just want
to be alone to examine the damages and count the casualties
of a war whose victor i could not point to,
and really, the only reason i walked into this bathroom was
to figure out how to walk back out again,
but i am not alone. if she
looked up, if she caught my gaze in the bathroom mirror, she could
see my hands shake. my first thought is that she has
no reason to be here, taking off her face
a handful of hours before she’ll put on a new one.
but before i can hate too fiercely, i see my own eyes and wonder
if maybe we made the same mistakes tonight. maybe
she fell in love with her boy too and in doing so turned her body
into a battlefield just to have a fighting chance to stay with him. maybe she
hasn’t realized yet. maybe she will take
her red face and slumped shoulders and shoulder past
me and all my sins and silence and find all the pieces of herself
strewn on the ground, collect them in cold arms and leave the room,
close the door quietly, pause at the end of the hall to see dawn
die for day, and think, “that girl’s hands were shaking,”
and think, “that patch of sky looks exactly like his eyes,”
and think, “oh—oh this was not supposed
to happen. not like this, not ever
like this.”