The Storyteller

Love the girl who writes stories

Because, her mind is a Spanish bull.

You may not be the matador,

but the red cloth of provocation. 

Sharp black words will live in 

wrinkled creases of bed sheets, and

bite you before you trail off to sleep.

They will wake you with ice water 

when screened sentences she wrote for another 

plays catch with your fragmented fears.

Remember -- writing is a reflex.

She can no more control her word sketches 

then she could control a shiver 

          inspired by a fresh wind

          a pant after an uphill hike

Feel sorry that her brain is being torn to pieces

By carnivorous thoughts trying to take up the most space in her head.

          Kiss her rubbed-dry conscience

          Rub her over-exorcised fingers.  

Ink stains are just blue, blood stains.

You're right, she will never call you perfect

And she doesn't know what it means to let go

She has encyclopedias of people who: pushed her at supermarkets,

          Cut in roller coaster lines

          Overcharged for event parking      

but she can empathize with anything, 

and you could be loved, repeatedly, by sheets of yellow paper --

Her pen heart ejaculating nouns, something so important

          She had to write it down.

You don't need to understand

Her fascination with sound,

Her erotic comprehension for plosives,

Or what it feels like perched in her head,

while seven story-bombs condense on top of each other.

Or worse 

When it's silent,

And the wasteland of her mind makes her dehydrated. 

Love the girl who writes stories

Because her memory is made of bricks

That she never stops stacking.

Yes, her words can be sharp stones,

You're problems could become sheets of paper,

          Arguments immortalized like monuments behind a glass shield,

          You'll never be sorry enough,

She can twist words,

Wiggle through a one-sided situation

You will learn to fear words from her thorny mouth -- beg to be forgiven.

Or you might emerge -- page ruble -- as her heroine's pitiless villain.

but her words could be soft wood,

Warming lover's hands

Feathering flames to feed off your oxygen.

Love the girl who writes stories

Because, she loves you.

and she doesn't do that easily or often.

Don't spend time reading her revisions

Thinking she vacations on shores of past pieces,

Spends the winters revisiting love affairs.

She holds the only key to an expired kingdom.

Crowded with people molded from spoiled milk.

But if you can't love her,

            Scribbling on restaurant menus,

            Glazed over eyes in the middle of a fight,

At least give her some stories and something important to write.

Ring

If its midnight, and your waiting by the phone, and he hasn't called you yet--even if he usually calls, or he calls when he says he is going to call, he isn't running late, he isn't busy with business, he isn't waiting for you to call him first or for you to test out his new ringtone; he might be: caught in traffic, staying with his mother, or suffering from no service on a mountaintop, but he is definitely...not with his wife, reading his children a bedtime story, or taking too much cough syrup to conk out until tomorrow and he sure as hell better not be avoiding you...now, you might start to think he is unreliable, a bastard even, a dirty, cheating bastard for running around on you; this arrangement, this code of conduct, that he came up with to keep you in line and keep you quiet and keep you wanting more but not asking for it, it isn't going to work either, but he says it will (and he never makes promises he doesn't keep, usually...unless something comes up), and he says be patient, "be patient,will you?" but you still have to wait a little longer, by this phone, waiting for it to ring, holding on to a hope that he is going to dial digits to make you smile, make you laugh, to give you something back, but its almost three and you have work at six, and there's nothing on tv but skinflix; your eyes close themselves but you don't let yourself fall asleep, you won't let yourself fall for the idea--he isn't going to call.

Finding Virginity

She lost it laying on a bed, pretending she was road-kill, like an armadillo--dead. like she was run over by a stick-shift Ferrari, that blasted Katy Perry, and sang along to it with a voice that sounded like sin.

She lost it to a boy playing Jason Mraz on a mandolin. Running hands up and down her crawling skin, chasing stories down rivers. Tipping wine glasses and poisoning their livers, like Huckleberry Finn. Until she lost control of her knobby knees and gave into him.

He lost it to a girl he knew like a foreign road sign, that he travelled anyway. That he would say he was just exploring her unterrained and untravelled territory. That the sign, when translated, said: she kneels, she peels, then she wheels.

He lost it to a girl, he worked on like a science fair project. He wanted the red ribbon prize for using the right materials and knowing how to mix chemicals to get a bang. He kept eyes on other experiments and looked for ones with better presentations and more sizable props to trade her for.

She lost it bathing in sweat, naked--on white, polyester sheets, seeking a bathroom. She stepped on his soccer cleats and tried not to swear but the pain climbed up her acid-reflux throat to coat the inside of her with sickness. It burned when she breathed and she couldn't stand the sight of the chemical mix running down her rubbed-dry legs, so she heaved.

She lost it to a boy who would never fall for her, who she didn't want to, even if he could--even if she could, even if she didn't know about the other girls and the other numbers in his phone.

He lost it to a girl with numb hands, who couldn't have a conversation without starting a fight. Who he said looked cute in red sweaters, who snuck out of his room in the middle of the night.

He lost it laying on a bed--like they all do. They swap the same stories. The same girl is written on the same bathroom wall in red marker. She loses it to the same boy who took the marker to the stall and threw her up there to be called.

They all lose it to a bed, not to the back of a coat closet with the scarfs and leather coats. They lose it like the tonsils in the back of their throats. They can't have it once its gone. The more they give, the more they lose. Where they put it--that's the only thing they have to choose.