Prospect Street--6/23

I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum.
-db

***
Prospect Street

It was a summer of olive pits
like those temporary lovers,
they would snap against my teeth until I spit them out.
I'm a modern child
I want things to come easily.

It was the summer he fell in love with a stray cat.
He carried his body to bed in the house
that made me believe I was my own character
in a story too lazy and beautiful to be true.

(If I was your daughter
maybe I wouldn't crave dairy so much
when I'm lonely.) I always pour a glass of milk
and wait for the phone to ring.

It was the summer when June smelled like burning kitchens,
marijuana, and blueberry pancakes.
The necessary things it took to mend my heart.
No doctors could help me find the pieces.
I just had to wait for them to scuttle back into place,
to wash in with the tide.
Thank god they never got woven too tightly
in the bluebird's nest.

I wanted to be their spinster sister
clutching her cameo, approving and disapproving
as she runs neon and naked through her own brain.
But I was just homeless, hopelessly lost
in borrowed and pinot noir
in mascara on the pillowcase.

It was the summer where days overlapped
like sand under the waves,
like glasses of tea being filled and refilled.
I would rise out of the water again and again
like a seal. My freckled nose
like the translucent fin of a bluegill.

The summer would pass in millions of colors,
but I couldn't choose one.
So I am just whitespace,
still it is undeniable:
I exist.