Three children sit behind a dumpster
outside of the Pier Pizza Parlor
unaware that they are children
Seven years later walking past Bridge Square
a girl remembers
**** we're out of cigarettes
and my mom's fucken car is locked. man.
and joints rolled with single ply toilet paper
burning through precious *** in the seaside woods where Indians
used to die
She, curling hands,
flattens a photograph of three kids in swimsuits and baseball caps
crouched under the rainy eaves of a waterslide
lighting a one hitter and gazing at their tiny dying world
now like a centerfold
it's covered in lubricant sweat and spittle
after too much time under the wrong beds
She sits on this small fountain
wistfully blinking and ******* down the cigarettes she wishes she could lock back up
kneading her dead legs and wondering
if it's better to have a past smudged by erasers
or mottled with bruises