1.
Behind me on the bus
girl laments
He texted me
I love you
I’m so over it
Teenage scent :
cigarettes good
shampoo artificial fruit
wends around bus funk
She sighs on the back
of my neck : staccato
clicks : chewing gum
between molars
Friend laughs quick
Why you dating young
He’s a baby
First girl I’m rounding up
to twenty now
2.
Then I dreamt
of twenty
As he entered me he
prayed or maybe
said Goddess
I thought I could
be that
Leaves in my hair
Twigs stuck
in my lace
dress
3.
I will
dream myself
into a do-over
Puella eterna
Round way down
Pleasure
without night terrors
fugues
The boy
wrestled a knife
from me
I’d just
OD’d on Depakote
A piece of bark
wedged in my mouth
this time I fucked up
just as I decided
I want to live
4.
Two years later
locked ward
smoking room
women
handholding
praying
please keep
us safe on the outside
Each had her burns
or mysterious
scar matrix
You wanted to look but
not to be looked at
5.
I round
down
to zero : O
: embryo
I would have named her Selene
who loved Endymion
so much
she gave him
youth with
interminable sleep