I had a man crush on you before I was a man, a high school senior

stuck in between popping pimples and failing math, because even

though you just moved to a new school, still dripping in Minnesota

loveliness, turquoise eyes sharper than the depths of every Great

Lake combined

In the 90’s

I’m asking how not to be

an apparition

these missives avoided like parents leaving

divorce papers unsigned on the empty side of the bed

Bo knows,

but I don’t really

because right now

he fashions

arrowheads

That season in New York I watched two lovers

nightly on TV, like friends-

I remember you at thirteen,

smoke-singed, scrawny

as a witch, an embryo

mortared in your gut.

You loved Shakespeare and Sinead O’Connor. We acted out scenes from Macbeth, Buried Child, and Long Day’s Journey Into Night.  You convinced me to dye my hair purple.

In those days, the seventh grade boys of Oak Lawn, Illinois, were expected to get at least to second base if not farther, and if they didn’t then they were marked as the biggest pansy-asses in Simmons Middle School.

In the rain, the dogcarries a dead birdfrom one end of the parking lotto the other.

By three o’clock the dirt field in front of the main stage is the world’s largest convection oven. Nobody’s had water in over an hour. Joe says, “Are we dying?”

I don't remember which one of us found the couch, but I do remember we found it on the side of a road near a bar called Spanky's in Lexington, Virginia.