We drink foul fluid from plastic water bottles to forget
about our mothers all tucked alone into their beds like
forgotten puppet shows. We want to forget about
the boys with faces all black & vulnerable
like barbecued hooves of deer & about our stomachs
swollen as skinned water. Summers like this
in towns like this during nights like this would be
better if we could drive. We sit together with knees
bare & bruised in short grass. We’re drawn to one another
like widows to cemeteries. We’re convinced that we
would look good in white wedding dresses. We grow
our hair out that summer, our hair long as piles
of dead snakes. The boys pretend to laugh at us. They
have ribs like cores of apples, ribs that would look better
discarded into the earth. The boys remind us of our
fathers, the ones busy building lakes as though they
were clocks. Our fathers are the same as us in that they
are constantly filling themselves up with water so
as not to get hurt. & at night they are not with our mothers.

are you ever afraid
that you won't fit
back into someone's
life like you used to