In the summer, girls paid her
in cigarettes and hickeys
to shave their heads
on her front porch.
I sat behind her in poetry class
and when she wrote the naked lady
tattooed on her arm writhed.
I tried to name the shade of her hair —
so black it was blue.
She loved Bukowski. Hated herself
in the most beautiful ways — pierced
five or six holes in her face.
One day in class she stole my phone,
punched her number in and saved her name — “k”.
She owned 1/26 of the alphabet.
I read her messages over and over.
They were the first poems.
They were cave paintings.
They were my own palms.
The only time she ever called was 3AM.
I WANT TO KISS YOU RIGHT NOW said her whiskey.
Don’t worry, that’s just something
she tells new friends said her roommate, sober,
snatching the phone.
The world had never given me
the language to say Come close or Yes or I don’t know
how to touch you, let me touch you—so I danced
with a boy that night. He was tall, I think.
I slept beside him, not touching, forgot
his name. But I remembered her hair,
bruise colored. How the dye left a spot
behind her ear. How it ruined nothing
but me.
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