On the plane of flesh where my knee joins my thigh on the left leg, I have a bruise.
A watery kiss from where it was sandwiched in my car door. The size of a dimpled golf ball, on the interior side.
It is vibrant in its hue; a mixing bowl of plum, magenta, teal and powder blue. It's freckled and veined like a Jackson ******* piece.
A little stain from where life not so tenderly reminded me of its existence

Closing took an extra half an hour. Not that I minded, that was just more money in the bank. My foot was itching to press the gas behind a silver Camry, impatient to munch a few Tylenol pm and put the world on pause. I merged left slipping past, I noticed a little hand. A cinnamon child, cherubic and fresh putting her head out the car window. Her little head nested between her folded arms, her hair a coiled ebony flame. I remembered that; remembered that girl. I was that girl. Bathing myself in the wind, tasting the air from the passenger side window. Her eyes closed like iridescent oyster shells, her hope worn like a jacket. She had not a fear of the world, not jaded, not cynical, not damaged. I gazed at her in admiration, this brave little lioness. Sometimes it's the small things that pick us back up.

There will come a hour
in a day that has not yet been born
that you will realize.
In the stretching of dawns arms as she yawns out the sunrise, you will realize what a gift I was.

In the bleeding inky blackness
of a night
spent kissing one brown bottle after another, you will realize
the treasure
you overlooked.

  Perhaps it will peek-a-boo at you
on an August afternoon
when you see a contemporary art piece on a boardwalk;
you'll see, you flaked me off
like a piece of the translucent skin
you peel off your sunburn.

It will fit together like a jigsaw puzzle
that you never cared to open;
left slumbering in your attic.

In a moment, in an hour, in a day, in the future, you will miss what I was for you.
You will miss me.

I never want to become desensitized to touch. The butterflies never to stop swooping in my rib cage when his fingertips roll on my knee
or the oozing sunlight that drips down my shoulders when his hands cap them to shuffle me back from the fridge, sifting for a beer.
His hand a parenthesis on my waist; I am drinking ocean mists and morning dews. The meandering, lolling loops his fingers sketch around the tip of my elbow
I never want his hands on me to feel trite. I want them to set me on fire

They both rest beneath the tent of thin, glossed books shaped like shoe boxes. Sitting in silence beneath the bolded print: "GRAPHIC NOVELS", wedged between teen fiction and romance.

The boy laid flat like the horizon with a hand folded and tucked beneath his chin. The father crisscross applesauced. They both wore sport jackets, matching patch of dark hair, oval face, a watery constellation of freckles.

I listened to them talk while my book sat opened on my lap; a storefront deli at noon. I did not read the words-I read their dialogue as it bubbled through the air and popped. With chartreuse vision, when dad explained to son Marvel and DC and heroes that are heroes in the laminated skins.

Perhaps heroes don't only wear capes, but leather sport jackets and orange baseball caps. Maybe they sit a bookstore on Friday night. Maybe they're called "pops". Heros who can sit in comfortable silence with nothing but time and a copy of Little Marvel.

You are afraid of me.
You are afraid because you wade in the shallows
and I am the unpredictable depths.
You collect shells that roll to your feet because you are afraid to swim alongside the mermaids. You are afraid because you don't have the capacity to love
someone like me.

I liked the way his eyes felt looking at me trying to play pool.
He laughed when I got low to the ground, balanced the stick up on my shoulder.
He showed me how to hold the rod like a pencil; click clack the magic 8 ball across the billard frosted top. Disco Inferno seeped from the juke box in the corner.
I taught him how to play slap-rat, and silently relished every time his hand slapped on top of mine (I usually slapped fastest)
"I'm sorry my car is such a mess" he said. His car was spotless actually, the smell of vanilla oozed from the vents. We rallied questions back and forth between the console.
He didn't leave when he pulled into the driveway; neither did I. "I'm sorry to be keeping you, I can go". His hand slid to my knee "no, it's okay, really". It was okay. More than okay.