Unmarried Apologia

If we were like most in our small town,
our engagement photo would've run
alongside a teen couple's
years ago. I wouldn't have thought forever
or babies or I'll clean the toilet
if you balance the checkbook.
I was desperate to join hands with
my engaged girlfriends, fan out like
paper dolls, identical in our white bustles.
I loved you, but you could've been anyone.

A year or two after the wedding,
I wouldn't remember why I'd chosen you,
or feel I'd had any choice at all.
Unmarried, I am not like the mime
feeling for a way out of a box.
Unmarried, I don't question you.

Nineteen, on a Mission

I sneaked a jerk-off magazine
from my boyfriend’s stash, a thick black
pen from my desk. A handwriting analyst
wouldn’t have guessed mild-
mannered college student. My marker spat
IQ 80—tops on one girl’s forehead.
On another’s thigh, Mother of two
abortions . . . and counting.
I captioned a tummy, Airbrushed
bitch, not feeling clever anymore.
Some faces, I blackened
or stabbed. Some pages became dotted
like rain on the morning newspaper.
At home later, I tucked the magazine under
my mattress, neatly as a hospital corner.

For the Woman Alone in a Booth

If she’d wanted to eat dinner alone,
she would've baked a lovely quiche.

She doesn’t believe in cell phones,
but whatever happened to ringing up the place
and leaving a message for a patron?

This is more humiliating than the time
Penny met her for Easter services
in an above-knee skirt and no hat.
Her husband had better be having a heart attack.

She makes a show of eye-rolling
and sighing. Now and again
she beckons the waitress for the time,
though she's facing the wall clock.

She splits the head off a sugar packet,
contemplates walking out.

Across the diner, a man in a blue work shirt
thinks she looks like his dead wife,
except for the eyes. He orders
a refill and a second slice of peach cobbler.

Vulnerability

The girl in the story let the boy
unspool the green ribbon from her neck,
knowing this act would undo her.

I have let you kiss my pimpled chin
crusted with toothpaste, my homemade cure.
I’ve stopped dressing in your closet.

You know how many lovers
have changed their minds about me.
Perhaps we’ll be listening to the car radio,
waiting out a heavy rain.
You’ll turn to ask me a question
and discover my head has gone missing.

Student's Visitation

The whole town goes when it’s a kid.
I’d only known him a month. As his teacher,
I was expected. The funeral home,
used to Alzheimer's patients from nursing homes,
was unprepared for us. For two hours we waited
in a bursting hallway. I collapsed against the wall,
imagining myself as a partial ironing board
that can be tucked inside a closet.
With every breath, I felt guilty
for taking air from our diminishing supply. For a moment,
getting out of the hallway was a relief.

But the coffin was in the visitation room, closed
because of the accident. His school picture
had been blown up to poster size.
I locked eyes with it, him, the whole walk down the aisle,
wondering for the first time
if he’d ever been kissed. I hadn’t, at his age.
When I reached his parents, I thought
of how many hands I’d shake at teacher conferences
the next week, and that thought broke me.

Outside the funeral home, the night
was clean and wet. I choked on fresh air.

New Jersey, 1989

I lined up Uncle Bob and Aunt Donna
for a picture in the driveway of the house
Bob now lives in alone. The day before,

at the magic shop with my cousin Bret,
I’d bought a camera that spurted water,
though we passed a kiosk of real ones.

Bob tensed his bicep, the way girls suck in
their stomachs. Donna beamed and tossed
her blonde hippie hair. They laughed

when the water came, but now he’d want
that picture, that bright moment before
the magician reveals a disheartening truth.

Encounter

You run by in street clothes,
panic on your face,
turn the corner and are gone.

I haven't heard from you
in years, not since you returned
my Christmas card in the mail.

In a nearby coffee shop, someone
notices through a window
that suddenly I've stopped walking.