• It was a football game, not a date
    (I’ll keep telling myself that until I believe it).

    Packed together in the yawning seated mouth
    the crowd cheered blues and golds as the old boys ran
    tossing our victory over the heads of fire,
    knowing that eighteen years couldn’t end tonight.

    I spun my war-flag for every scream of touchdown,
    petrolium smiled when I remembered how
    to make my lips turn up like that,
    I posted them in the lost and found.
    (They scored seven times, and eight times I left
    hoping for a pair of forge warm arms to wrap me)


    Tangled together against the rough white wall,
    claiming each other as we settled into a friend or lover
    (He got all three of my souls, left right and center
    while Kim sold my thighs to Amber)

    His knees fenced my arms in as he announced
    that he was stuck, upon driving his arms around
    narrow shoulders, no room for traffic, I was told that
    I was stuck too, forbidden to go to battle.
    (Luckily our enemy had the advantage
    but only dealt a blow once since our walls
    were too strong to go around).


    I balanced on the edge of a guardrail
    pushing away the past as it tried to catch me
    and laughing with the future, hoping it didn’t
    pass me in the left turn lane to leave me
    stuck in the present in a no-passing lane.
    (When he said he was stuck he meant
    that he couldn’t escape, and I secretly hoped
    his heart couldn’t pull away from mine
    so that’s when he tied me and said I was too).