Link to the NovelI wrote your name on beach rocks.
It took me all season but I made sure to cover
a decent plot of the summer-lands
so you would find it attached to mine.
You could keep your name, we could both hyphenate.
I laughed.
I wrote your name in swirling fonts.
I added hearts.
I was sick.
I knew we were never meant to be.
But I practiced the dangerous devotion
of all early love in a kid’s hands.
Just like when at 12 I knew
Steven King was meant to adopt me.
He just had to meet me, hear my stories, and
I planned it all out.
The T-bone over the high iron gates,
to distract his Rottweiler’s.
I buried a dream or too as well,
but they were mostly muffled screams
and kisses that got lost in the rain
on a night where a baby fox watched us
make love,
and it was too beautiful afterward
to think about more than once
after every new major life shift.
I learned the calligraphy of tired and high
and over-excited bodies in beautiful folds
and creases, sleeping in what is impossible
yet never even for an instant awkward.
I rolled a joint from a Bible’s page once,
with honey and desire.
I swore it was the last time
I lent out my papers at life’s parties.
I kept going.
I found new loves, new chains, new homes
and new rocks.
