The two of us in a bed with sheets pulled taut as a sore throat. My underwear
was wet with your spit. We woke up everyday, early, to climb to the tops
of cliffs and scream, “THIS IS AMERICA!”

These are our highways, this is our weather, this our honor.

Our whole world was wet and shivery as a cool dream.
Your chest was covered in goosebumps, your chest was tight, your chest
was chattering. Every night I kissed your teeth with my sticky
and gummy tongue. We made love, once, atop a wooden dining room table
that lacked a tablecloth. It was the hottest day in August -- the 21st --
and we’d forgotten to go skinny dipping, but still we were stripped naked,
like newborns, or parents. Your back was arched like a boring joke.

Afterwards, we drank coke from silver cans. Still, us, on a porch, still:
“THIS IS AMERICA!” We often pretended that our house looked out
onto an ocean. We missed the waves, what they did with our bodies.
If I could have I would have stood in a field of wheat with you, mountains all long
and curved and ripened behind us. I never had the dream that I told you I’d have:
the one in which my nails claw at your face just because your face looks haunted,
like hunting grounds. I’d had the dream about every other boyfriend. It is no
longer summer, but I will have it anyway, and the next morning I will
wake up to a ****-soaked bed, sheets cooled without a fan.