She Can Write.
She spelled out her name with Smarties
in the cup holder of my car. And as I sped
down that hill that drops off…her name
became another jumbled clause in the
sentence that runs us on. I used to drive
my father’s V8 late down Parkway lanes…
I sped us back from Memorial Days filled
up to their brims with mistakes. We took
bathroom doors off walls to keep our friends
from drowning in toilet bowls. We put boxes
down garbage disposals just to watch some
teeth shred holes in cardboard. And when it
was all over, we took our baggy eyes all the way
back to our small homes and our small lives and
all the things our parents own. She spelled out
her name with bottle tabs and paperback scraps
in the sand under the boardwalk planks. When the
wind came, it rearranged the letters into something
none of us could read.
