eloquentwthrage

Asking if you could come over,

I wrote a note to my mother

with a pictogram I drew of your last name

because I couldn’t spell it yet.

Brenda dropped you off

in the pouring rain,

your face wrapped

by a pink hoodie

strung and tied tightly

beneath your chin

in a slipknot.

We played with the off-brand Barbies

my grandmother had stocked my room with

and watched Tom and Jerry on channel 29.

My mother fed us

PB&J with the crusts cut off

and milk in Grimace and Hamburgler glasses.

We ate off Dad’s old Lone Ranger tray tables.

Later, while my mother distracted herself on the telephone

talking to Nancy the ninny,

you and I crept up creaky stairs

to the master bedroom

and rifled through her vanity drawers.

You applied a shade of lipstick

so purple,

it made your corn-silk hair

look like yellow crayon.

I opened a stick of rouge

and dotted my cheeks

with smears of the clown red.

Bored with that,

we forsook the makeup

and headed to the poster bed

for a round of Moon Walk.

We jumped so high over the mattress,

we bounced off the taut fabric

of the canopy

before my mother stormed the room

and yelled at us to knock it off.

We screamed like little girls,

ran downstairs and out the back door, giggling.

The sun had come out

and dried up all the rain.

We ran past Daisy in her dog box

and the overgrown lilac bush

into the field of cucumbers

thriving on Jack Eckart’s property.

We skipped rows and soiled our sneakers

as we ran and ran away from the house.

We didn’t stop until we reached

the railroad tracks

where they crossed Backline Road.

You stood on one rail,

 and I on the other.

We faced each other

and didn’t say anything.

Your eyes were big, blue marbles,

Your lips iris petals.

Neither of us felt the vibration

beneath our feet.