About A Boy

You held my right arm as Tyler pulled my
shoe off. The bone had just snapped moments before,
and moments before that I had just told you off,
told you that I wish I'd seen your S10 wrapped around a tree

the previous night; I begged and implored and slapped
you in the face but you drove off dizzy regardless.
I'd driven dizzy for you before though, too (the lines on
the street blurring together, smiling at the fuzziness and

being trapped in your gangly limbs that could wrap around
us both twice, and you did it). The bubbly lime on my
lips, fresh like the Bowling Green air that night, you
keeping Coop from getting his ass kicked: he's "from the streets."

And then there was that kid trying to break down Beth's door
so I just hid and you soon joined, but I never asked you to.
The only thing I ever asked you to do you didn't; you
enjoy cement shoes in the white trash halo of Ohio, and in

the morning Brandon gave me that look, a look that
perpetuated my happiness and haunts my memory, just
like your taillights did, dizzy and drunk and driving into the
darkness, while the bone just ends up snapping and I'm just 400 miles away.