Middle school, age thirteen:
that strange doubled feeling

when walking cinderblocked halls
painted calm institutional blue -

there I am, heart in hand,
clopping in too-big shoes

to the strobing gym to see the girls
in their new bright dresses,

our bodies and faces branching
into adulthood relentlessly;

to see friends wearing cheap new suits
& talking endlessly of Kelly and Molly,

of Sarah and cheerleader Brittany,
of the Other Kelly, Erica, and Erin

(some having thoughts of Bryan
& Kenny, Mike, and Other Mike)

Yet there is another of me
listening to checkered floor,

how the linoleum squares echo
as I stalk through emptied halls,

(how disturbing, when a known thing
is so reconfigured and unfamiliar...)

I reach the chaperone stand,
deliver my ticket from a hot palm,

step into the loud and wild parade
as the dimmed dance floor writhes

with pubescent shadows,
my shoes clacking and shining,

looking for Kelly and Other Kelly,
drifting to safer bleacher corners:

unaware that thirty years later
this night is still engraved

on the back of a breaking brain:
the year the harvest failed.