midnight taffeta calves, your mom’s rose-gold
diamond pendant resting between *******
too-long hair tamed, fastened at your nape

this peculiar impasse between pretending you’re
prom-young and you’re midtown-gala-elegant-old
you’re a little both, at twenty-one, and a little
drunk—fourteen-dollar champagne, picklebacks
and the desperate paradoxical preservation of this memory

you can hold your cloud-head up beautiful still
so you hitch your dress
runrunrun behind the Rhodes
crouch down in the thorns with every-elegant-one you love
twenty-one, desperate, ebullient, ****

and ****.

stand up straight again, glowing, sage
check your coat and dance
nobody’s the wiser