Twenty to a Pack

Last night put me on some crazy eightfold path shit, Vee. Vee? Vee! Are you listening? Scraping the bottom of the carton, spoon that could knife. It doesn’t always come full circle. Sometimes it comes serpentine, meanders; doesn’t come at all. That was some closure, you can’t get mad at it. Have you ever seen Strangers on a Train? I whacked yours and you whacked mine. They could never muster the courage. We overlap; all fuck-me boots and whiskey smiles and ten-car pile-ups (could they, really, pile up)? Let’s go to sleep. Yes, now. Now. Lights.

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If I smoked cigarettes I’d be more deliberate. It’s worked into the play. It’s puff, consideration, puff. Eyes skyward, ash, exhale, ash. I’m much too straightforward a girl to sail, did you know that? I hate jargon and I hate strings. [Ash.] Sailing is just jargon and strings. [Ash.] Knots. You know what? If you were my boyfriend, I could say, “I love my boyfriend,” and for the first time in my life, actually mean it. [Flick.] There’s no ocean. It’s Chicago. There’s no fucking ocean.

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How We Met, because we still haven’t. Nobody asked you to fall for the idea of me. (That would be exhausting.) You were selling your dead girlfriend’s belongings on the front lawn in the summertime. I looked to passersby for the source of ice cream sandwiches. They melt; her paperbacks and records and coats won’t, will never. I have reverence for dedications, the inscribed. You’re older, I want older, but we must matriculate together; to-get-her.

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Contraction, I have favorites. Excited apostrophe, rashly stamped, too late for some. You wrote me on my birthday. “I know we’re not friends, but.” Prove that I’m not your adversary; anniversary! Does your hair still fall over your eyes? I don’t want to see you, but I kind of want to know.