On a cafeteria table,
in the middle of February,
the kind where it gets dark at 5pm,
sat eight minature figurines made of shells—
brown, speckled, like a calico cat
with googly eyes on the middle of their heads,
one business man with a black derby,
one with a pretty pink bow,
or even one with blue suspenders,
and all their chubby bellies
rounding out over their pants. The woman

with her iridescent nails, bony fingers,
the skin pressed thin against her knuckles,
lines them up in a perfect row, tilting
their heads into one another as if
they are having a tiny conversation
admist the numbers being called—
B14! She stamps in red. B14!
A man pushes a cart around the tables,
like one mows grass around graves,
with fifty cent candy bars and potato chips
on flimsy paper plates. He asks the woman
if she wants ice in her Pepsi, but she just blows
a long sigh of smoke and flicks the sparks
behind her back. He doesn’t ask her to pay.

G56! She touches the head of the figurine
with the mustache. G56! I’ve lost count
of how many numbers I’ve missed,
but then there’s you, your hand on my thigh,
creeping, your fingers pushing
my cotton skirt up, up, and up—
O74!
We play with acrylic chips instead of stampers.
We’d like to win the lottery tickets,
maybe cash them in at the gas station
after we drink a couple iced teas and snack
on Mentos cause we ran out of money
two bottles ago.

The figurine with the fishing pole has one pupil
that lies at the bottom of the eye,
lop-sided, and staring at me while I pretend
that I have G47! or pretend that this isn’t
the first time you’ve brought me here, G47!
instead of a real date. Or pretend
that I can’t hear the woman cough, and cough,
and cough as she switches stampers between every ten calls
or touch this figurine or move that one, just slightly,
this way or that or

N44! She doesn’t have it. N44!
I don’t have it.
Don’t worry, child, you’ll have it all someday,
she whispers, sideways from her mouth,
with your thumb making circles around my hipbones,
and the man pushing the cart, the squeak of the wheels
B7! But I don’t have it. B7! I don’t have it.
I don’t have it.

I’m ******* freezing.
I’ve been sitting here across from a parking lot
in a little patch of green, and the sprinklers
keep going on and off, but I sit here—
watch the droplets slide down my black leather boots,
shifting my legs in my soaked denim shorts,
picking at the soggy bread of my dollar menu sandwich.
I didn’t win the peel off sticker contest on the wrapping,
and I also missed the trashcan when I threw it out,
like you threw me out

and it’s not like I saw it coming. Considering our cat
is still at the vet and we just found a new couch,
but I guess my bag of clothes and one pair of clean underwear
are my only companions now as I wait
for some sort of direction or weird, metaphor
to slink down from the Maybelline billboard,
crawl up my skin and into my mind so I’m not just
sitting here, freezing.

But I guess it’s not as cold as that one time
you slid half a Klondike bar down my back
as I sat circling help-wanted ads in the paper.
I screamed, but you covered my mouth and kissed
the space behind my ears a million little time.
I licked your hand and you wiped it on my shoulder,
turning

back to the stove to stir the Campbell’s soup we found
behind the expired olives in the cupboard. Yet, I always thought
that I was your sliver of a masterpiece.

It’s not everyday that someone calls a girl beautiful
when she’s got bags the size of small countries
under her eyes or a flannel with five missing buttons.
But the way you held my collarbone in your hands,
or carried my sculptures to the shows, or bent
your life a little differently just to fit my mold.

I guess our love just grew old
to you, but I never thought that a parking lot,
after hours of drizzle and haze
rising from the blacktop, would look better
than the canopy we made from old t-shirts
that hung above our bed with a mobile
of everything I ever made up in my head
that you could be.

The neon sign's piping glows cool amber
through the glass's core like an unholy
halo, drowning in the now half-empty
bottle of Miller. The liquid calls me
home, sliding down my throat, tickling my tongue.
As I see her slight figure framed by light—
dipping at the waist, my fingers begin
to trace the curves, her body full, alive.
"Picture" by Kid Rock comes on the jukebox,
while the guys knock down a last round of pool.
She sweats through a humid night in Fort Knox.
Drops sit on her neck like pretty faux pearls—

I cradle the bottle like a blue sin.
Taking another sip, I drink her in.

Sometimes I picture myself in a red prom dress,
with converse under the tulle, and glitter
covering my eyes as I nervously glance
away from your face, inches from mine,
trying not to stare at your crooked bow-tie.
Sometimes we’re jumping over the tide’s
foam, under the moonlight, licking the salt from our lips—
my saddle shoes on the dunes, your jeans rolled
above the ankle, but my curls falling loose around my face.
Sometimes we’re moving black and white photographs,
1920’s with fringe and silver canes,
and sometimes

we’re like this. Naked on your mattress,
with the ceiling fan at a standstill, sipping
stale beer from old bottles you left lonely
on the windowsill. And sometimes I know better,
but tonight I answered your call and I came over
to your lazy bones on the sunken couch,
watching the lava lamp’s goo stick to the bottom,
yet still lighting
the entire room with a neon glow.
By now, you think I would know

that I can never count on you unless it’s cheap,
and convenient, and broken, and me. It’s only
ever me, but I can’t just haphazardly
stay in the spaces of your life that need filling.
I picture us, hugely, with a white house,
blue shutters, little kids building towers on the porch
just to knock them down.
The whole bit, picture it! But all
you ever see me as is figure
that you can reach if you squint hard enough—
a mirage that you like to believe
only you will ever hold.

I wish you’d kiss away my tears
Wish you’d open my lips
The way you have
Every intricate part of me
And steal your name
Right off my lips
Right out of my mouth
Until all thats left of me
Is this drunken desire
To drink to forget
Your
Name

Funny, how sometimes butterflies
skip over your skin without ever landing,
how basketballs spin
around the rim without swishing,
or how things never seem to work out.
I’ve been wishing

for moments of high tide, gravitational
moons that would draw me to you,
in the middle of May on Coney Island.
I want you to pull my pigtails like it’s preschool.
I want to bleed neon, shout pop tunes
to accompany my words that sound like
a poem we all had to learn
to recite from memory.

Funny, how we store meat behind our popsicles
in the freezer, how we tear up things
before we throw them away,
or how defeated we feel when we wake up
to zero new messages.
I’ve been reaching

for the plug in the drain,
sipping champagne,
hearing your name,

when all I really want is lunchboxes,
the kind your mom leaves notes in.
I want to beat you in four square,
color on my Converse, catch crayfish
in the creek behind your house.

Funny, how we tone down our souls
to fit the mold, or interview each other
based on pieces of paper when we are
alive, and breathing, and it’s funny
how we save money for next time,
plan for tomorrow before we’re done with today,
count our accomplishments before our scars.

Funny, how all we ever wanted
was to finally be exactly where we are.

Your tears on my shoulder sleeve, your footsteps
pacing in the kitchen where I know
you’re making a cheese sandwich underneath
the refrigerator light, and cussing to yourself
because you forgot to buy mayonnaise at the store.
Your makeup, your purse, the thousand receipts
in your glove compartment where I know
you stash a carton of Marlboro cigarettes
to indulge yourself in during afternoon traffic,
while blaring James Blunt from an old acrylic CD.
Your mornings, your coffee creamer, your head.
Please, come back to bed.

I’ve watched you balance jelly beans with boulders,
gorgeous dresses with your sweats, and your idea of love
with everything your mother has ever said. I know,
by the way you tense your arms around my rib cage
or how your toes curl against my shin, that your nightmares
are only apparitions of childlike separation. Your fears

clarify moments like this, my hand tucking hair behind your ear
while kisses trail your collarbone like a dotted line
you dare not sign. You see a reflection of damage in my eyes.
Your bags, your memory, the rain that gathers in speckles
on your windshield every day. I’ve tried to lighten
the black in your life, but things have scratched at your soul
and now it’s dead. Please, baby, come back to bed.