That’s because she’s nice to you, my friend said when I mentioned leading a blue-eyed girl down a pink lane lined with false impressions, pirate loot and trepidation, how I lost my eyes to see the vapor trail to galilee, and how the taste of her kisses sometimes didn’t interest me. My mind skipped like a dirty LP to the first time I noticed that his mouth and his brain moved at the same rate, and that both of them came through school unscathed. Which isn’t nice or mean, but some disservice in-between, some flip of a switch behind an eye, genetic mishap, poetry. I’m almost too broken to ride that ride. Still, I remember swinging hard on the chirping swing set tucked in the side yard, singing twenty verses of Skip to M’Lou, marveling at how each time I got to darling the set’s front legs jumped up off the dirt and my whole rhythm lurched toward flight like a restless month trying to escape from a year.
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