I hope you talk about me when you're slammed,
laying in the hall playing soccer at 2am.
I hope you see my reflection in the smashed mirror
from an aggressive kick you missed blocking.
I hope my shattered complexion reflects
in the broken glass
like a soft reminder that beckons you back
to your bed. A memory from a week ago rises,
when you were singing me a song
through your lips and cradling my expectations.

I played keeper and you were just trying to score.
Our roles reversed.
You dribbled me for a good while,
spinning on the ground you drug me on
just trying to catch hold.
I already had stains; I didn't need new ones.

I hope you talk about me when you're sipping
on something that will numb you seven different ways to Sunday.
I hope people have to stop you from calling me,
"It's all ****** up," you whine
with your eyes closed
about how you messed with me--
what happened there?
Take another shot.

I hope you talk about me.

You pulled long wings from my back to my ribs-
deep passion inscriptions and hieroglyphs
with your nails as I whispered unholy
prayers into your ears with your mouth closed.
I tripped into your superstition that started with a kiss
outside your door after midnight,
pressing my shoulder blades into the palm of your hands.
You said you didn't try any games.
I said I didn't like to play.

Be careful, supernova, you'll burn out.

I attacked you right from the start.
"Shut up, would ya!" you'd say with a smile,
laughing when I'd scream back at the television commercials
when they'd ask me stupid questions.
I drove you insane.
But when you'd fall asleep I'd trace your eyelids
like crop circles with my fingertips,
making a thin bridge over your nose
connecting pinpoints like constellations.
Sometimes I'd ask you to read the stories
that you wrote on my skin.
You'd pass the message along through your lips
gently against mine the way a shadow sits
on a figure.
I'd sigh when your hands skipped over
the space between my thighs.

Be careful, supernova, you'll burn out.

I took a chance on you.
You didn't bid on me.
I guess it's true that some things
burn too bright.

I put you together with a song
the shape, the sound, the length
two months before you were gone.

You didn't really feel that far away
because I still thought of you
as that close,
hand beneath my head above the pillow,
pictures on the nightstand,
kissing you in my dreams.
You were still that close to me.

You didn't really feel that far away
until you got far away.
Until the distance wasn't a number
it was me not calling every hour
it was me not tracing all your steps
it was me starting to
not forget
but just
push past it.

You feel really far away from me now.
Like it wouldn't be just a plane ride.
It would take a lot more than an old photo in a frame
or a backwards hat memory
of something we loved when you were here
and you were mine.

You feel really far away from me now.

Shivering fingers, cradling a cold clay bowl
with dull roses surrounding the rim.
A Klondike bar cut like a grid on a paper towel.
My grandma used to let me eat one in the living room
"careful of the carpet"
on her yellow couches covered with sticky plastic.
She would play the Elvis Presley Christmas album,
To Ginny written in black sharpie on the sleeve
with a Love always, Mom underneath,
over and over again
while she hung bulbs of wood on the bottom branches
so her Welsh Corgi wouldn't break them with his paws.

Slate slabs with handprints
in purple paint every year for the holiday.
She'd set death aside in a coffin ashtray
to kiss my cheek.
Presley played in the background.

She'd rock
on the front porch in white wicker
coughing into the lid of a Pepsi can
until she'd catch me pressing my nose against the door glass,
tell me to turn around and sit on the couch.
It was too cold for me.
She'd only be a minute.

When we played, I'd hide between the two baskets
in the closet that held her hair products.
I could count all the bottles three times each
before she'd say she was too tired,
put on her coat, grab a white box, and hit play.
I always hated that album.

I knew it the moment you looked at her.
The tender slip in your jaw line
fall faint with a smile
showing teeth like secret treasures
in your worn leather chest.

Her hawaiian hello tasted sweet on your lips.
Hot pink tank top ribbed in rings
around her tiny waist,
flat, tan stomach peeking between
her top and dark short, short jeans.

She followed you to the parking lot
after you passed her on the curb.
Her tip toes visible underneath
the lift of a 2014 model truck between tires,
rise and fall,
leaning back into her heels when you set her down
shadows behind tinted windows.
I saw it all.

In my dreams, I pretend I made it up.
Cuddle next to an empty side
trace the moon's sideways outlines
on the sheets.
Breakeven.
I knew it the moment you looked at her.

A blue bubble blew up
on my screen one night at 12:31.
I knocked a glass of melted ice
onto the carpet and it bounced
like rubber off the floor,
rolling under my bed and hitting the box beneath it.
Your name like a gunshot through
my insomniac mind, crippled
with dreams
I swear
really happen sometimes.

"I need youu tto buy me a ** tel"
As if I could instantly flip money from my fingertips
and have it lie in the palm of your hand
to slide over the marble counter for a key in exchange.
"I need to get out of here honestlyy"
As if I could come carry you myself up the stairs
because elevators scare you.
"No you come here"
I can't, sweetheart.


As if I could be on a plane in the next ten minutes,
fly so far to where you are.
As if I could land in your arms one more time,
and promise you that everything
would be okay--
tell you that you're fine.

I can't, sweetheart.

He pointed to the 4'' by 7'' framework
with two teenage girls faces pressed
against hers, an overbearing smile in the background
of a boy caught in the mist of poor lighting
and ******, drunken photography.
She told him about the field
laid green and black blades wet
from central PA rain and smashed,
meshed clumps of mud sticking to the rubber mazes
on the undersides of old work boots.
How the fire billowed over hazy introductions
and pressured joy of seeing someone no one
really ever wanted to see again.

She told him about the drive with two girls,
how many stops
it took to reach the county party
and how many times she counted the circles
on her thumbs before she was distracted
by another person wanting a picture or another beg
for a beer.
She laughed as she reflected, glancing up at the photo
then back at him as his hand
lay between the crease of her *** and thigh.


He was from Durham and didn't get it.
But she painted it so vividly with her tongue
as it danced over the summer memory
that he felt he could be there
if he let himself.

She unwound for him like a yo-yo
to which only he could pull her back up again.
Unaware that she mindlessly
let him control all the strings.

As she talked, jumping from picture to picture,
he noticed her leap frog
from each. She skipped three or four in the middle,
and even thought it seemed
as if she could open with the press of the right button
there were still some things she wouldn't let him
really see.
She held her breath when the story turned bad.
He saw her eyes balance on the phrase,
he now noticed, she carefully chose next.
She was no outburst. This was no plea.

She had a plan and undoubtedly knew
all that she wanted him to know.

As she flipped to the next page
he counted the seconds between the pauses
and moved his hand to her shoulderblade.