seventeen and three quarters

writing poems about the teenage experience

[seventeenandthreequarters]

gay people

I realize how

precisely not-drunk I am

when the straight man knocks on the door

of my dorm room

asking for vodka and lemonade. 

Ian is sober because he

is not a lightweight and not a bottom and

not straight or anything like vodka man,

but thank you for asking. 

Because he is sober and because he 

is not-straight he answers the question

by shouting

I’m a faggot.

I am not-drunk and not-straight and I am

sweating

in this dorm room with the rainbow lights 

beating down on vodka-man’s biceps, 

reflecting off my friends’ small frames. 

Vodka-man laughs nervously and

tells us all that he’s Proud of us

with a capital P

and only fiscally conservative

with a great, big heart.

His mom took him to Pride when he was 9

and he has like, four gay friends. 

Vodka-man shares a look with me and 

I know that he knows 

my friends are loud and bright and open

but he’s said what we need to hear. 

even if Lily’s tongue ring screams I eat pussy

and Ian’s pink hair doesn’t take any shit. 

Vodka-man shares a look with me and

I know that he knows 

I misgender my friends when I go home to my family. 

I tell my mom I’m going to end up with a guy. 

I wonder every day if I really could make it in hell. 

Garrett catches my eye and together we acknowledge 

how cruel it was

to drop her hand as he walked into the room. 

[seventeenandthreequarters]

ian couldn’t light up because there was a tiny popcorn fragment trapped in his white bic lighter’s spark wheel and i wanted to tell him “best friend” is the warmest word i’ve ever wrapped my lips around:

wednesdays 

smell like

microwave popcorn and lighter fluid,

cherry merlot hand sanitizer. 

like sizzling bleach and 

mcdonalds chicken nuggets. 

wednesdays 

look like 

skinny fingers

wedging pink towel under the door,

poking a toothpick into a one hitter,

gingerly touching it to my lips. 

a trail of smoke blown at 

the spider webs on the wiry screen

into blurry city glow,

a wisp of red brake lights saluting

passing police car that 

hasn’t caught us yet. 

we analyze youtube videos 

perched on wooden chairs

only his hands move as quick as his head.

the sun sets around us until we are 

sat in the dark and i

want to tell him

im not afraid 

of anyone in this world any longer but 

his laughter

warm with spring, fresh off the lake

cuts me off as it traipses across 

the felt blanket on my thighs

the lotion infused tissue covered in ash. 

he squeezes my shoulder,

taps on the desk light and 

tears open another bag. 

[seventeenandthreequarters]

the collectors.

I am grateful

for the old man at the thrift shop

who chuckles at all of

the tiny figurines

we’re wasting text book money on.

I am grateful for

the long conversation

about who we were in middle school

before we noticed the pattern of tiles on the bathroom floor,

for time flowing silently,

sneaking past us.

I am grateful for

the large fry

for the way I am too full and

for my heavy legs trudging home,

for my feet

thumping concrete.

I am grateful

for maladaptive behaviors

for the big scary word and

the trauma it admits to,

for its weighted blanket of constant apologies

it only wants to use to protect me from the biting cold.

I am grateful

for the way my body bends and

clutches people inside of me.

the way it intimately adapts,

eagerly gives without a thought of

hoarding anything for itself.

I am grateful

for the collectors of the world,

for everything we clutch,

for the never-ending stretch of

cradling.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

the urge to sync.

I answer my best friend from 7th grade’s

FaceTime call on the first ring.

She tells me she started

knitting again this week

for the first time since

we learned together in 5th grade

drumming up memories of

yarn tangling across our thighs

and frayed strands of color

mixed sloppy in our popcorn bowl

calloused fingertips skipping

the commercials of Degrassi.

We read the same books,

hung the same posters on our walls,

shared names and

shared lives.

We were a

stretch of sleepovers

of “your house or mine?”

of bikes sprawled on my driveway.

I feel grateful to have

experienced the bond only

two thirteen-year-old girls can.

The kind that pays this time and

lets her cover the next.

The kind that licks grease off pizza and

cackles a slimy grin.

The kind that isn’t too old

to push the tire swing,

but isn’t too young to

boast braces boy’s smile.

The kind that saves her first

bloody pair of underwear to

show the other.

The kind that keeps joint gel pen chart

to forecast when they’ll be able

slip pads under stalls,

share chocolate and Advil,

giddy grownup secret.

After years of urging our bodies to sync,

she should not be surprised

when I hold up my own needles,

knotted in two rows of frizzy yarn

freshly bought this week.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

her favorite book.

it’s all marked up and dog-eared,

secret messages

scrawled all over the margins.

I found it while I was purging my room

of anything teenage,

of anything “best friend”

of anything you.

Tearing down your drawings,

tucking away the teary emotion,

taping up the boxes and

tossing the shrieks out to the curb.

I flick through the tired pages,

the spots the highlighter bled through,

the scribbled hearts,

the notes you had written yourself

because you wanted to remember

how it felt to be kissed like that

for the first time,

in your dad’s car in his mom’s driveway

how it felt to drive home

to hold all of that

bubbling in your chest.

And I remember.

I remember and I want to

tell you I do.

I want to give this to the

little girl with the frizzy hair

and the eating disorder.

I want to give her the words

that will remind you of all

the Christmas mornings

I spent at her house.

Those that remind her

of the bowls of popcorn,

the pinkie swears,

the rosy bubbles

fizzing from our hearts.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

the posters in my room.

I remember ripping them down.

Boybands were girly. I wasn’t cool. What if my crush ever came to my house?

The sound of magazine paper tearing from pink walls, rang in my ears for three nights.

My eyes flicked around empty pink walls and I heard all the creaks in the house.

I put them back right where they were, claimed it was only until I found new decorations.  

In a few weeks, they’ll be gone again properly this time, because college kids don’t keep photos from J14.

When I try to sleep, my eyelids sting with the faces who have watched me grow split in half, stuffed blindly into a folder or a garbage bag.

My brother brags about how he wants to empty everything out, paint my room green.

All of the stupid posters I’ve meant to take down for years, listen with sad eyes, beg me to say something about it.  

Instead, I think of the girl who put them up.

Her little fingers carefully thumbing tape over creases, planting kisses on paper foreheads and saying goodnight out loud, that she had missed them, that it was hard to sleep all by herself.

Maybe they are only asking why the hell she thinks she’ll be able to stomach it this time.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

jazz.

The air is heavy with the reverberations of the trombone. The piece of grass I weave between my fingers is sharp like the trumpet cutting against my skin.

It is summer and we are as sticky as the sour gummy worm sugar lacing our fingers.

The saxophone jostles through the melody, fumbling her solo and improvising while my new friends and I stumble to find our own rhythm.

The jazz musician tells us it is all about love and I think of how Katie already knows my starbucks order. Brentley catches my eye before she cracks a joke.

They make sure I do not get lost in the crowd.

We are talking about what it felt like to be nine. We are pretending to mosh to a tambourine beat.

We are dancing through the subway station the concrete firm under the soles of our shoes, music bouncing against the tile walls and trust pounding in my chest.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

the night a man asked my girlfriend to pay him the 15 dollars she was saving for college textbooks so that he could stare at her boobs on an empty train platform.

And suddenly, the way my girlfriend’s blue lace bralette poked out from the tangerine tank top was no longer something for her to tease me about, tell me, “my eyes are up here,” with a pointed look and pinch on my hip.

My flannel shirt pulled tight across the little crop top she was no longer playfully calling me a slut for wearing.

Her feet, firmly planted on the ground, not kicking and flailing to the pump up show tunes, no lipgloss microphone held to her mouth for the big orchestra solo.

I feel the icy wind cutting against my tense crossed arms, listen closely to its croon, reminding me that our bodies were never really just ours that we were silly girls to ever imagine otherwise that this is just what happens when you ride the red line after 10pm.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

what if i loved her?

My bare legs are heavy on the warm, vibrating plastic seat. Sweat is pooling under my thighs, causing me to slip some with every dragging turn of the bus. I am gripping the railing in front of me tightly. Knuckles press out against thin skin while I try to keep myself from jostling onto the man next to me.

The thing about college is that you’re supposed to reinvent yourself.

My English teacher told me, “you are losing a part of your identity,” as we boxed up my favorite classroom at the end of the school year. I remember the way the wooden armrest creaked as he used it to stand back up from his crouched position.

The thing about college is that who you were in high school, doesn’t really matter.

I am sitting here, sliding and gripping. Gawking at people around me. The older girl with the buttons on her backpack and the boy too big to be playing on a scratched up Nintendo.

No one on this bus knows my name.

Once, when I had my learners permit, I wanted to get to a concert all by myself. I spent hours researching routes. I typed them all up and printed them out, gave myself step by step instructions on where I needed to be when. I got on the wrong bus, watched the sweat pool in my palms for two miles, then excused myself and called a cab.

But what if I liked that girl?

The one who wrote, and wrote and wrote. Recorded everything. The one who felt so glad to be wanted, she would bend herself to fit. The one who battled her insomnia by surprising her friends with cookies. The one who was so eager to be like-liked she wrote poems before they had even kissed. The one who spent hours in her favorite classroom wrapped up in a blanket.

The one who couldn’t ride the bus.

What if I loved that girl?

For the first time in years, truly loved her. Let her wear anything she liked and called her beautiful. Admired all the ways she was passionate and all the emotion she held in her chest.

And what if I took her to the city and left her there all alone, with no one to bake cookies for and no room to wear a blanket in? And what if it was me, who reduced her to the college freshman staring blearily at strangers on the bus along a route she didn’t even bother to look up?

[seventeenandthreequarters]

dripping panic.

There is something unsettling about drool dripping down the corners of your mouth, your fingers wedged between your teeth, bit down hard to avoid making a noise. The coarse feeling of your throat as the panic trickles down your lungs, dripping into your stomach. You can feel it swishing around in there, the panic, of course, mixed with the chicken tenders and fries from dinner.

You don’t have any reason to feel this way. There’s a breeze floating in through your open window and the ceiling fan has settled a stable pattern of clicks for the night. Your bed was made before you got in, so there’s an even weight spread across an even sea of blankets, draping your body in a gentle warmth.

You pick something to focus on, because it’s easier than telling your mom you threw up on your comforter because panic was pelting through your dinner.

Last night, it was about markers. Precisely the storage of markers, if they could all fit in a college dorm room with three people, if they could all comfortably reside in a box from the craft store, if the box you were going to purchase would be too pricey to indulge, if you had no markers and there was a sudden project you needed to complete and it would have to be finished without 48 colors.

Other contenders include: the number of windows in your dorm room, the extent of padding in your padded mattress, the various types of electric toothbrush you could invest in, the water pressure quality in the shower, among all of the regular college fears of course, like building a new family, making it to class on time, and shitting in a public bathroom every single day.

It doesn’t really matter how you label the panic that hits you tonight. It isn’t about that. It’s about that moment just before you hit the water after you jump into the pool.

It’s the split second where you’re flailing in the air. And everything that’s just happened floods your mind. The realization  of the shock you will feel when your body smacks against ice cold water, the regret of letting your toes ever leave the patio.

And of course there is the longing, for that refreshing, refreshing relief.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

your claws.

I find myself remembering your fingers the way they twitched and fiddled with your phone case at the dinner table.

The way they clawed and bent while you peered at new acrylics.

For so long love looked like your knuckles visible through your thin skin as you pushed your fork around your plate as you thumbed over the remote buttons for a horror movie as you slid them down your dogs soft back.

Love looked like your fingers wrapped around my throat, the blue nail polish mimicking the fragile veins you reminded me could be crushed.

Love looked like holding back the urge to squeeze.

And if bruises were left it was only an accident.

Only that you loved too much.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

skylines.

The skylines scribbled on my wrists were synonymous with safety I didn’t recognize.

I drew them with my good ink, traced black lines on blue veins, dragging a future across fragile bones.

My bathroom sink would be covered in hair ties and my desk in novels and my cabinets in mugs from thrift stores. My dog and his floppy ears would be named PingPong and his collar would be pastel pink.

A blonde boy would lug my sheets down to the laundromat without me asking and he’d bring me two suckers from the bowl on the counter. He’d be approachable. He’d always let people merge into his lane.

My couch would be a place for you to rest, once every two years when you came to visit, so deeply removed from my bloodstream that I’d take you to TimesSquare and send you right back home.

My real friends would be confused about this pull out bed lady they’d never heard of because my name would be separate from yours, and no one would speak for me.

You wanted me to get my doodles tattooed, match with you, drew me cards of sparkling lights, told me that you loved how eager I was to run, to be independent.

“Such a silly idea,” to believe in so much.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

all of that wriggling life.

Freshly twelve, my best friend and I stole a butterfly net from a girl in another cabin and trapped a turtle under a pine tree.

She was facing the lake, which meant she had already laid her eggs, and she was fair game.

We brought her to the wild life center and put her in a plastic pool. We’d work on our cross stitches at the table across from her, give her a new name every day.

The first time I tried to hold her, I could feel her body moving inside her shell so I dropped her back in the water.

That summer, my bunk mate snuck her cellphone under her mattress and taught me to shave my legs, flick hairy cream off the razor into the grass.

I read a whole book series in a week, climbed trees in sun dresses, showered all of three times, covered my morning toast in cinnamon.

I remember that the purple flowers near the dining hall held sugar under their spiky petals, the way we’d slurp the ends, taste sweetness and upper lip sweat before dinner.

I remember every piece of me of me squirming eagerly under my skin, how it felt to have a grasp on all of that wriggling life.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

one of my ribs juts out more than the others because it’s encasing all the love wedged between my bones:

hot sticky marshmallow fluff engulfs my lungs.

each greedy breath grasps for more attention, but is met with thick, heavy cement seeping down raw throat.

suffocate any thought of what’s outside of the covers.

flushed.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

counting.

A soggy, folded tissue can wrap six times around my index finger. The soft fabric brushes my overgrown cuticle as I wrap and unwrap at the same pace I rock back and forth in the recliner.

My grandma’s little white bichon laps at my shin, paws my hand each time I go to pick up my phone. Thirty six wet strips of dog slobber glide down stray blonde hairs before I push his tiny chin away, pull legs up under me, and rub his neck to distract him.

My closest cousin’s dad and I talk about podcasts while we squint at each other through the darkness. The sun has set, but neither of us want to move to turn on the lamp. The one he loves most has conservative undercurrents, but is mostly backed up by law journals. My favorite is produced by a gay man who doesn’t worry about timeliness when it comes to the news.

The house was supposed to be quiet today, my grandma repeats for the seventh time. My grandpa is on morphine and that sort of drug doesn’t leave much room in the throat for chatting.

Six visitors shuffle in through the front door to squeeze his hand and card fingers through his thin grey hair.  His brother in law brings a case of eighteen beers and leaves it on the counter.

Grandma asks us twice if we’d rather not sit in the dark. She eats dinner five hours after her usual time.

The woman from hospice said that, generally, it takes three to seven days to die once the process has begun. She will order more medicine, but she doesn’t think that he will need it.

My uncle Timmy did not truly sleep until four days after the night he stayed up with him.

We are counting how many seconds go between each breath he takes. He sounds like a child who hasn’t yet learned to clear his throat, a whistling moan twitching up through the air followed by a startled gasp. Twenty two seconds.

My bottom lip is trembling and snot is flicking off it onto the protective wrap covering the carpet I grew up on. I swear that my lungs are the ones filling with fluid and the rattling is in my ribs and the weight in my head is pressing down between my eyebrows, and we are counting, and we are counting, and we are counting.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

elephants.

The only land mammal who cannot jump, who cannot run, who would rather spend its time completing math problems, or using its trunk as a snorkel, or admiring itself in a mirror. Who mourns the dead by stroking bones with soft snorkel trunks, and hearing feet, and long minutes of silence in hot desert sun. Alexander the Great rode power walker mathematician snorkeler into battles to show off a vicious beast that secretly went home to lather babies in sunscreen sand, speak to lifelong mates probably about their days and when the littlest son will stop sucking his trunk and the ones they’ve lost.

[seventeenandthreequarters]

we are not who we thought we would be.

And if you had told me in middle school, That I would be editing newspaper layouts at a speech tournament with my fingers spread on my girlfriend’s thigh I would’ve smacked you.

Frizzy mess of curls tumbling on graphic teeshirt, who prayed every night and loyally memorized bible verses and wanted to be a lutheran school teacher and write devotions or church lessons more than she wanted to feel honest.

Big black glasses framing wide blue eyes, Who choked through class projects and never read aloud and lived for grownups who called her respectful and well-mannered and sweet more than she hoped to be heard.

Twiddling fingers chipping off neon nail polish who closed her eyes in the locker room and told her short haired, snapback camp counselor, she just wanted to “be her,” and threw up in the bathroom after the lesson on marriage and idolized boys she’d never have to love or even meet more than she considered liking herself.

Scrawny, clumsy, mess of a kid, who thought that writing was a job for liars who couldn’t make eye contact to accept a compliment who begged at night for someone, anyone to help her love the things she was supposed to.

And it is okay that we are not who we thought we’d be, when we slept with bibles under our pillows and our worlds were the size of a church playground.