19 in braids and hot pants
I lived with a truck driver /
poet / Harrison Ford look-alike.
Dyslexic, he tickled me awake
to take down poems that
came to him in dreams.
We took our dinners to the
picnic table in the
gray-blue light of our
evening yard and basked
in the pending darkness
like geckoes in the sun.
He kissed the back of my
neck and rubbed my cherry
curls all over his face
and watched unblinkingly
as I undressed, dressed.
He remembered everything
I ever said and it got
so I had to be careful.
He had trained himself
to remember, as he could
not write things down.
I know where that house is.
Sometimes I think we could
dance there. His arms would
not forget me. We would eat
strawberries with whipping
cream in the claw-footed
tub and wrap ourselves
in a marigold towel,
watch the bats fly
over the Gulf of Mexico
from the porch swing
and giggle, skipping into
our almond sleigh bed
and never notice the house
had been so efficiently
demolished, and never
remember the things
we can’t forget.