by Danielle Altman
We kneel, hidden
Between a bay window
And your mom’s curtains
Heavy and floor length as a gown
Hike each other’s skirts up
Loose the neck ribbon
Let go the sash
Cup our hands around our mouths
Breathe against cold glass
Marry our initials in the steam
Like we were kids
Which I guess we still were
Thirty summers later
I’ll come back
Your childhood home
Bad part of Pomona
Curtains long gone
Hot carpet smell
Built-in Victorian cabinet
One pane still shattered
From a rock we tossed through it
But when I press my forehead to the bay window
It’s winter again
Your breath warm in my ear
Despite the evidence
Of you three miles down the road
Your body three days cooled
Freshly lowered
Into eternal ground
How long does a ghost last?
I think you should stick around
In your mom’s bedroom
Where I’m camping out
Until you come back
I keep thinking about how all the boys chanted Sinead
After you shaved your head
We became friends after that
You getting made fun of
Made me less intimated by you
Also, I liked Sinead O’Connor too
Or what about that time
Your mom came home
With a hot new boyfriend
Closer to our age than hers
And a sack of Cornish hens and farmer’s market apples
You leaned across the table
Made him rub your head at dinner
He blushed. You didn’t
He said he shaved his legs to win bicycle races
We crawled beneath the table for proof
Shaved shins, sure enough
Much slicker than you
Smooth as fuck us laughing
Our fingers intertwining
As we rubbed his legs up
Later that night
In your backyard
The dirt was dank
The dirt was wet
Psychotic lights and bulldozers
Flickering on the horizon
They will never stop extending the 210
Back then, dirt was something we sank into together
And burying was just a metaphor
In your hand
A stolen apple
Hollow pen
We knew what to do
Scored it, cored it, smoked it
Jeans damp with lawn and dew and you
Breathing
Using weed
As an excuse
For kissing
We kneel only for ourselves
I am tongue
Your smoke is apples
****
Danielle Altman is a writer whose work has appeared in Write or Die, Little Engines, Dream Boy Book Club, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and elsewhere.