these thoughts against the pulse, like music


she was eleven years old, new to the snow.
you were ten and thought you remembered ten winters.
the morning after, you rolled ice into a sphere and
thought twice about launching it into the grey sky
to pound unforgivingly into the ground
at her dirty-sneakered feet, but did anyway, and
laughed to see her tongue between her lips, her feet
stamping the grass, greener for the frosted night.

she was thirteen years old, made mute by music;
you watched her part her lips and close them again
near another girl's ear, watched her pretend to dance,
to raise her hands above her head when the others did,
then drop them down again. you curled your fingers
around the waist of someone else and
saw her, over your partner's collarbone,
kiss the air to feel what it might be like.

she was seventeen years old and tipsy
on stolen sips of wine, on a couch, her eyes half-closed
and her fingertips dancing in her lap,
her lips parted as you touched her shoulder to whisper:
"take advantage of me." and you, sixteen,
kissed her neck and her jawbone and her mouth.
the morning after, you watched her wake, on the couch,
smelling of rotting roses and love's misinterpretation.

she was nineteen years old, really dancing,
sober enough to smile at you standing alone by the fridge,
drunk enough to swallow your saliva with a
gulp of something sweet and bitter and alcoholic.
she picked up her skirt, spun it around
and followed. you thought of sex and fast cars
and longed for her dancing hand on yours and
a road and snow falling though the roof.

the two of you are twenty or twenty-one;
you've forgotten her age and with every passing minute
she is growing more like a tree, fierce at nighttime
and friendly in the summer, noisy like music
when the wind or you brush her branches in just the right way.
you, the taller, with your ear pressed against her chest,
watch her belly while she watches the ceiling,
composing a memory song to the pulse of her heart.


(november 2003)