The summer we phantasmagoriaed ourselves
 
into oblivion was not the same summer
 
 
we couldn’t stop the pop of fat green frogs.
 
One hundred winters later, the snow
 
 
keeps falling, and I penny-candy my disappointments.
 
To heal the broken hearted, I sticky-glue doilies
 
 
to doilies and pony-mail them to Oklahoma.
 
I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, a friend says,
 
 
But Mike’s dead. Liver failure. I look dead Mike up
 
on Facebook, and he’s an old bloated version
 
 
of the kid who’d felt up Debbie D when we were thirteen
 
and dizzying ourselves with carnival-cake smokes.
 
 
It’s just the stuff of life, I wanna tell Debbie D, but
 
what do I know about holding the memory of a now-dead man’s
 
 
hand on my pre-pubescent breast? Maybe nothing.
 
In the other room, my daughters sing.
 
 
All I know: that groundhog was a fucking liar.

 
 
 

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Nicole Callihan’s poems, stories and essays have appeared in Forklift, Ohio, Cream City Review, The L Magazine, North American Review and Painted Bride Quarterly. Her first book of poems, SuperLoop, was published in early 2014. Find her on the web at www.nicolecallihan.com