the thought of sleep after a cold bath
is just as bad as having to listen to
your family doctor diagnose your insurance:
dying as fast as your childhood memories,
and although you've got the same blood
your grandfather, half-dead, doesn't want to know your name
and he doesn't care about the wrinkles water gives you.

he's got eyes like those charming men you see on the
t-e-l-e-v-i-s-i-o-n.
what's more:                                                            ­                
he can wink and blow kisses at the same time.

two phones
two coffee cups
one long conversation about nothing
and shared laughter over the mumbles we heard
from the downstairs neighbors when we were kids.

remember?
we'd hide in bushes with flashlights,
too afraid to move, too afraid the dark would
catch up to our short-distance legs and
our too-wide-to-see eyes.

I remember:
we'd talk into unplugged microphones
and trap ourselves by climbing fences
with stacks of rocks that we could barely lift.

one time, we found a field mouse:
he died the next morning.
the funeral was alright,
none of us cried at least.

I blame the mouse for getting caught in the heater,
we gave him a house and wrote his name on the front
so he wouldn't forget, but his mother must not have
taught him how to read English.

You told me he wouldn't be able to--
"why is it a boy? why can't it be a girl?"
--it didn't take me long to realize:

you can be whatever you want
or whoever you want,
and that if I was
(as trapped as)
that mouse,
I'd probably choose the heater too;
but I wasn't,
and I had you.