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by Amy Soricelli

I should remember more of you.
More than blurred shadows/spots of teenage bullshit
like acne scars.
You hated most people/they scared you into white-bread crumbs/their crusty edged
brown dreams followed you down my block.
You spent the summer on my doorstep - a cloud of smoke circling halo-like in the senseless
clouds of car alarms and lonely fanged dogs sliding sideways across your vision.
You never saw me but i was there.

I should remember more of you.
More than random shadings of deep mindless blank bus rides.
I climbed up the side of your building like a pipe.
Wordless tunes in my head wrapped tight/a long rope of anger - wore
it around my neck like a cross.
Our black "underneath the heart" makeup dragging the eyelashes down our face.

I could not love anyone more than your postered walls with tape
curling off the edges like a snicker.
Your father left your mother in a puff of suitcase slammed shut.
We drank a bottle of wine in the back alley and I held your hair and sang Motown.

I should remember more of you.
More of what filled your boots/crawled up the length of your legs wrapped
tight around your belly; the fleshy part of some lake fish.
You blew grape bubbles of gum-snapping-pop full loud in math class.
We bent over laughing like folded paper - the size of our words foreign in our mouths
like borrowed tongues.

I should remember more of you.