babyhead

Something

full of a lot of things

falls and shatters all over the kitchen floor, and then there is the shouting.

There are repetitions of sentences and an oblique use of an obscenity.

You and your friends are told to leave.

The word cronies is used.

You move under an overhead light and through the crowd that spills from the kitchen in to the hallway, past walls that are close and are painted white over yellow over wallpaper, and white lipped blue plastic cups will leave cloudy indelible rings on shelves. The bookcase is the only one left that can stand upright at this hour. There is a reverberation of drums beats under your feet. Something in the basement is trying to be birthed and is messy and awkward and sloppy. If you were sober enough to creep a look down the wooden steps loose christmas tree lights with their eyes crushed out, a bike pump that lays on its side, rusted paint cans, milk crates of paperbacks and dusty beer bottles would be waiting.

Though not as loud

As your movement.

All banter has ceased

everyone is looking at you

while someone ashes on the floor

and looks away

Your footsteps are strident and purposeful.

I say to myself: Cull, to cull, the culling.

Drunk and oblivious

you pass me in the hall, as close as sex, and drag across me

your hip, waist, and the swell of your breast.

Whatever I had been saying

tastes of like dust on the tongue.

You are a red and black caterwaul.

You are an unbelievable thing

as you move to the front door.

Scintilla of a car wreaks.

All light from our eyes touch you

and

your circle of dark fire.

Eye light

Twined in ours

breaks off as cinders

smudges

under your eyes

like

Fingers of carbon black

We falter.

We make ourselves small as you pass

And you take all our sparkle

Motion

replace it with focus

pull it to you

And we will stand struck

Until you leave.

Except for the one by the door.

The blue of your eyes

marbled with blacks, shades of Mexican coppers

And the green of everything you have lost

Will not waver from her face

You say: Get out of my way.

And she does.

I watch as they walk you to the door

and then hear

bottles break in the street,

under a circle of porch light.

Days later, you will tell me

As we sit in a parking lot

and the April rains pounds the roof

Of my car

With the radio off and both feet on the dash board

Sharing a chocolate chip cookie

That this scene made you wetter

Than any boy

you have even met.

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