By Rhiannon McGavin
Not that, but the firstest love
in the old neighborhood that you would cross
to walk the dog in front of her house,
just in case, The whole way there
your heart would shiver like a box of matches
as you rushed through the concrete churn
of your city with the poodle mix
in conspiracy to strut down the street
whose name you never learned, knowing it
by feel alone, your neck screwed
to keep the other girl’s house always in sight:
what must be her bike
sprawled in the driveway, red curtains
closed with light spilling out or else open
to a hallway where she must
drum her bare feet down to deeper rooms
where she’d sit on the kitchen counter
with her girl-legs dangling or practice scales
on the caramel cello she wheeled around school,
her fingers tough from the strings. Never mind
what you’d do if she actually
saw you: catch fire and die, probably.
You loved: the bony knob,
a green peach, on the back of her neck,
the sugar-gap in her front teeth, the handful
of inches she had on you, cach a little star
to wish on in the constellation you told
of this girl, thc subject of dandelion-blown prayers
and lucky coins, every word she said to you
polished into a song. Up one sidewalk,
down the other, and the whole way back
with nothing new ro worship but next time,
next time. Of course, her house
was really on the next street over
which struck you long after
you stopped watching thc loquat tree
where she didn’t live bloom & rain.
When someone does touch you
finally you leave the hot room
with splinters between your hips.
The late bus home glances past it,
your best house, the blessed sidewalks
pearly under streetlights,
open as the first curve
in a seashell where the living thing
had carved spirals with its living
and then gone. You remember
being told it was the whole ocean
rushing in the conch when it was
only your own pulse echoed
but you still hold it up,
hear your blood sing.