Disenchantment

It is a feeling like disenchantment,

like the cleanup crew at Times Square shuffling

          celebrators away minutes after midnight to sweep up the ticker-tape.

Like drinking glitter and dancing until it digests;

          your whole body is filled with sparkle before settling into your toes,

like pulling the plug of a lava lamp

or setting the snow globe down after shaking it and watching everything hit the base

          —how the porches darken one by one as the Christmas lights disappear

and the emptiness of the living room when the tree is taken down

and waiting days to kiss and feeling nothing when you do

and each year realizing the carnival gets less

and less fun and more

and more of a headache.

And when your little sister Amy asks you why you aren’t drinking

          your Coconut Cocoa tea—

she pours a cup for Raggedy Ann—you take a sip and taste nothing

And the first time you watch Peter Pan without joining in on the chorus of, “I believe in fairies.”

          And if you feel like the last day of summer

          you’ve fallen out of love.

Ruby-Throated Roots

The first day of gym class we measured heart rates.
I told Miss Patricia I was a hummingbird
reaching twelve-hundred sixty beats per minute.

I was ruby-throated running my fingers
along the skin of my neck
feeling for the prickly start of feathers
like a boy searching for the first signs of manhood

and Anna, who worked at Lucy’s Diner
where I always ordered a vanilla, never chocolate,
(like Kasey and Michael and Luke ordered) milkshake
told me I was a hummingbird because I never settled down
but I knew it was because I could fly backwards—
and all the Cardinals,
     and Blue Jays, and Siskins
             and Tufted Titmouses and Finches and
                        Downy Woodpeckers,
and even Eagles with a wingspan of 90 inches
cannot fly sideways and backwards,
only straight.

But I can sit in sheer space and watch the world around me
or travel back and retrace my steps.
Because returning to your roots is not only a quest in Skyrim,
but is necessary to understand who you are.

Popsicle Nostalgia

Remember those Spider-Man popsicles with the gumballs?
I wish I had one of your face so
I could chew your eyes out.

But then again, you’d be one of those cheap Fla-Vor-Ice freezer pops
in a pack of 75 sold in bulk at Sam’s Club.
They used to hand them out to us on Field Day
at Liberty Elementary School half-frozen, half-sticky sweet
liquid that choked the back of your throat
and it always rained at the end of the day.

We ate Gushers by the cyan colored pool sides
and kissed toads who turned into boys
who weren’t very good at kissing back.

I thought I could chew you into something soft
and blow you away.
But you weren’t easily impressed.

Summer’s sunblock left us cold.

You went swimming in your shorts
I went swimming in my bra
and then we went swimming in nothing at all.

But remember Fruit by the Foot shoved into our mouths
whole?
Sparkers looked like your eyes I wanted to kiss
and burn my lips.

I’ll tie myself to a bottle rocket—
say I made it to the moon and left you in a gumball machine
—only twenty-five cents.

Cyanocitta cristata

All these girls thinking if they lose weight they can float—or fly

but they forget the jet plane;

heavy anchors in the blue—

studying fragile frames of fledglings

who become Blue Jays but never Swallows. 

Only chews and spits.

I knew a girl who thought donating blood helped lose the pounds

she became her own vampire;

bleeding herself beautiful.

Girls who transform into sheets of paper,

hover on the water surface for seconds

and then absorb like toilet paper and sink.

I think, even if the time came

their spines wouldn’t support the wings.

Oars

On Wednesday his heart stalled

so he put himself in neutral

and told her to get out and push.

Said the last shotgun rider left him with a bang—“right here,”

thumb up

then down, forefinger out—middle of his chest.

She was a pretty little thing

with the strength of a field mouse.

“You’re like the monkey bars,”

her sister Abby would say. “People always slipping off,”

sweaty first date palms

“sometimes the strong ones make it across.”

But he wasn’t a date, just a friend—just

an ’07 yellow Camaro driver

nicknamed “Buttercup,”

just a Transformers enthusiast,

just a Paper Mario champion,

just 140,000 hairs on a head.

And she wasn’t a girl,

just an oar used to propel himself

further down the river. 

Ribbons

 30 minutes spent on hair flying out the window

and I’m sure more cautious girls would keep the thing rolled up—

check herself out in the passenger side mirror

legs crossed and heeled feet slightly tapping to the radio

enough to seem interested in your taste of music and look sexy

without appearing to have a seizure as I do

when I hear a song I like

—and politely ask you to turn on the air conditioning.

            “How can you hear with your hair wrapped around your ear?” he asked.

I laughed and the girl who smells like limes and ties her hair with green ribbons

says, “Nice mop,” and giggles,

but not with me.

It’s a shame she had such a pretty laugh

and beautiful blonde hair that didn’t match her disposition.

I looked to you who said nothing.

If I wore ribbons in my hair: pink or baby blue

or lemon colored curled bow-ends with scissor sides

and sprayed Sun-In in my hair bleaching streaks and smelling like lemons

and together that girl with the ill-fitting laugh and I

would create Sprite or Sierra Mist; would you have kept your mouth shut?

But I have no ribbons in my hair

or pigtails or plaits or strawberry-printed scrunchies.

            “It’s got the wind in it,” I said. “I think that makes it beautiful.”

The Architect and the Pine Tree

You’re sitting, silently wondering if you can trust me

as I’m running eyes over bookcases thinking about colored spines

and author’s last names and the Dewy Decimal System.

I think a book on the Middle East

and a book on America might both be in the geography section

together

but they don’t leap off shelves, balanced sideways on hardcovers

purring pages and ram each other like Robot Wars fighting

over oil.

Somewhere in the conversation you infer your doubts about my integrities

wondering out loud if I am a serious girl

or a party girl

and I think of the pine tree out the window

and wonder if it was planted strategically to beautify our view.

Not mine and yours specifically—

but I am scared I and it are alike

stuck in front of a window placed to pretty.

Planted for people like you to look at, occasionally

when studying gets tedious,

to look up and see me as you flip pages in Pride and Prejudice

or Integrated Algebra II,

instead of a concrete building or a sidewalk;

tall and evergreen, rooted at your window.

I am tired of boys with schematics,

aspiring architects,

who see and must know the basics of something beautiful—

the structure of happiness

as if happiness is built with Legos and the design written

in the instruction manual; but maybe it’s just because I’m a kinetic learner

that I don’t determine my fondness on how sure I am

that you are fond of me.

Jack Sparrow Verification Syndrome

I’m sick of Jack Sparrows,             or maybe William Turners

and girls who hold beauty like buds can bloom only once in fists against chests and hide it under X’s in the sand.

Girls who think of their beauty as if it needs to be discovered

like they’re a diamond hung in Walmart among the Cubic Zirconia and Hello Kitty key-chains

waiting for a pirate to verify her prettiness.

Girls who wait like a moon for Neil Armstrong to claim them with his flag, to revolve around—

and guys who want a girl who’s buried, who hasn’t been opened

a diamond in the rough

             gold under sand

as if he can shine her a smile after he’s dug her up.

Flakes of sunset color, palm leaf hair, and Hawaiian Tropic cocoa butter skin under fingernails as if she is a paradise that can save his soul

and he can tell her things no one knows about because she is his

and then he’s angry when he grasps some other captain had to entomb her in that chest—

              beneath that sand—

                                    for him to find.

One Color

I wanted to surge my body against the cool windowpane glass as rain knocks it

and discard my clothes and ram into the coldness until my skin rebels against me and its captain signals to turn back and tries to flip itself over like a sunny-side up egg or a beetle with its legs twitching and its body a tilt-a-whirl

to get away and leave my bones alone

I wanted to tumble through the glass and be the gutter sunk in running water soaked in rainwater slushing and sloshing slipping into wet grass

and lay and let the chills break into my pores, my freckles, my moles and become the black against the blue atmosphere the black against the blue air that dyes my lungs dark navy

my trachea also known as the windpipe a sapphire

the black against the neighbors across the streets’ porch lights the black against the blue and red patrol car’s lights pulled in their driveway the way tall black trees barren of leaves look against a blue-gray sky at twilight in a rainstorm

the black of their bones

bold and one-color the way the color is drained against the sky before total darkness after sun sets after watercolors wash away with the storm

I wanted to be the black that every color turns into

a shadow with a hue that every shade blends into

the inherited beauty marks from my grandfather’s genes no longer recognizable as I become one color

one color against the earth