1.
We were long into the summer
with the grass sweet and
the crabapples grainy and sour
on our pre-pubescent tongues.

The sun shadowed a clock onto
the street and it was time for food
and families.
That night I lay in bed with the
radio courting my dreams
while you slid into my friend's room and
seduced him to join you
in a world of make-believe,
helping him to get dressed;
pull those pants up around his neck
and tighten the belt.

The next afternoon, sweaty
from sunny summer play,
I was on the stairs when
Mother told me he had run away
with you. My knees went weak
like the time when little Suzie
kissed my cheek. I grabbed the
rail to steady as my breath
sucked in mucus and tears.

Later that evening, I lay awake
looking for you and day dreaming
of that belt slipping
around my neck, teasing me
with the caress of heat
offered from a soft whisper
against my skin, sending shivers
through my mourning flesh.

I saw you then for the first time
in your black veil and funeral dress,
your beauty unmatched by my naive trials.
You called to me to be with you
and see my friend again.
I wanted to go. I really did.
But I was a child full
of the fear that god would reject
my soul. I pulled the sheets over
my head to quiet the cries, all the while
hoping that sleep would steal my breath.

It wasn't fair. I wanted to go, too.
I wanted you to seduce me.

2.
It would seem that Summer
had become your mating
season;
the sun rising on
another solstice,
yet
barely able to cast
a shadow
on my chin
as, once again,
you lifted your black skirt
and led another
virgin
to your astral plane.
His eulogy was nothing
short of plagiarism;
a capturing of words
once meant to comfort
now fell from the sky
like birds whose wings
were dipped in the wax
of hell's
candles.
I laid in wait
for you
that night,
my hands folded
in a casket
pose
ready to receive
yours
and cup the bottle
of pills
like it was my last
swallow
of water.
I imagined your touch;
the tiny beads of death
sticking to my palms
in a nervous sweat;
wondered
if your
lips
would be soft and sweat
like Summer's
grass;
if they would quiver
with anticipation
as the pills passed
over mine own.
But the sorrow I shed
that night
was not for my friend.
You
did not come;
stood me up
and once
again
it wasn't fair. I wanted to go, too.
I wanted you to seduce me.

3.
The loneliness of that night
wrote love's number
on the back of my hand
and then taxied her

away

like the sweet blonde
in the back seat
of that car,
locking eyes with me,
mating
smiles
as distance swirled
into a ghost
with no haunt

dialing...

...re-dialing

a stalker
in the making
trying to hold feelings together
with air

while you shacked up
with Mother Nature
to lure my friend into the Winters night

wearing

nothing

but the alcohol
in his veins. You were real

now

vivid, sexy, alluring
my teenage confusion hustled the night
for
your fingers to embrace my throat.

My parents
ignored
you
the elders said to scorn you
and my friends,
my dead friends
said I should lay with you

as they had.

And still I am alone.

It wasn't fair. I wanted to go, too.
I wanted you to seduce me.

4.
For a moment you began
to fade
like paper in fire,
black dust blending away
into the breath of night.

Not that I didn't think
of you.
I had just found other
curiosities,
explorations that denied
faith and
self and
god.

I wasn't happy.

I wasn't sad.

I wasn't anything
other than
I
just
was.

So I didn't notice when you began courting
your next beau. Ignored you
as you led him,
hand-in-hand,
past the crabapple trees and Summer fields swaying
to a private afternoon on his
bed

when you would offer
what was left of your virtue,

boil his lust to a craze
like a mutt gone rabid,
foaming and glassy-eyed,

howling
for the moon to appear
because the sun burns with a rage
masquerading as passion

that builds within...
builds within...
and
builds until he concedes
to pulling his own trigger as you whisper a bullet in his ear,

spray painting graffiti across his bedroom wall.

I ran to the noise,
got there just in time to read the words

"I...love...you..." sliding down the wall.

I was numb - beyond numb.
I may as well have been a vial of morphine
killing pain I never knew could exist.

He loved you
or did he love his parents? his brother? girlfriend?

me? He was never
going to answer those questions.

I found myself alone

again.

It wasn't fair. I wanted to go, too.
I wanted you to seduce me.

5.
I missed them
missed them all
I missed you
missed you most of all
awaited your next visit
like a child chasing their birthday
blowing out that candle
wishing for you to come and take me.

I had never wanted
until I wanted you.
Now I invented time
just so I could think about you
carved the words "i love you"
into my wrists
All the while hating you
for fucking my friends
and not me.

Why wasn't I good enough for you?

Slut!

No, I take that back! Please,
let me take that back.
I didn't mean it...but I did.
It must have hurt you
because you left another
dangling
like a branch broken in the wind
swaying until it falls
and decays
six feet into the ground.

I'm sorry.
I just wanted to be with you,
be with them,
be something

other than alone.

It wasn't fair. I wanted to go, too.
I wanted you to seduce me.

6.
Winter pushed its way into our lives
the wind chapping our faces red
cooling tears into an icy vein
as the ground beneath sat hard and empty,
a caged lion hollow from the lack of the hunt
waiting for us to feed it
a piece of flesh torn from our souls.

You didn't take this one,
that thing my family worshipped,
prayed to,
called their god
wrested his presence from me,
left me sobbing like a toddler
on the edge of a coffin hole
wanting to jump in
searching for him,
searching for them,
searching for you.

This pain was more than
I ever wanted to feel,
a culmination of time...of life...of all things gone by
memories pushing on my heart to stop
or to beat again
I couldn't tell,
for this woman stole my words
kissed them from my lips
a taste so beautiful it became confusing
to hold death and love in the same hand
as a wing gone broken, unable to fly
but knowing that flapping that wing
was the only way to survive.

She was all things beautiful.
Everything a lonely,
insecure teen could summon
in the depths of sleep.
I lay with her, a god and goddess
rolling in the clouds
unaware of the world that died beneath us.

She left when we played gladiators,
fed him to the lion,
ran away with a life that she had run away from.
Left me looking for you
for you were the other, the only,
the love for which I pined.

It was then you knocked on my door
let the wind bang against the shutters
trying to tell me you were her
that you had come to visit me
teach me how to love and leave and die.
I felt you, held you, kissed you and lay with you.
She left. You always left.

There was loving. There was leaving.

Now it was time to die.