There was a time when I thought that I could be someone

in the passenger seat of your Nissan Altima, white

 

like the ring of my eyes, white veins of milk running off baby-chins.

I wanna have your babies, baby.

​

Someday I’ll love Gabrielle Grace Hogan, the version who deserves it,

which is all versions, if I could just hop the turnstile without paying the fee.

 

You & I, we’re bursting like a fruit plump with worms, which is either

a good metaphor or a bad one. This is to be determined.

 

If you can’t pee in front of someone, are you even in love?

Urine-splashed tiles, piss-soaked laughter—this is not the first love poem

 

I’ve written piss into. My body aches & I ache for bodies. I digress, or,

I do anything but. The bathroom groans. The toothbrush bristles

 

are matted & frayed & left wet at the edge of the sink. Your cuspids drip

fat lengths of honey. My cousin’s wedding gown says to me, Live every life

 

as if it were your last. Always the bridesmaid, or something.

At the thrift store, I buy an enormity of photos. Who are all these people, left

 

behind? Have I seen you on the street, small woman with the mealy eyes?

Do I know you in this life,

 

or must I wait for the next? A world where twins separated at birth

never meet. G tells me I see the world for what it could be & not for what it is,

 

& this is precisely my problem. An orange peeled back to reveal fangs

& a gopping, sopping portal-mouth, a girl who says she loves you

 

with the length of her eyes but not the width of her breath.

The heart bursts like a glass balloon. This photo, this amalgamation

 

of lives—why discarded? Why here, between the Confederate memorabilia

& rust-laden pans? Who forgot you, or worse, who remembered

 

& just didn’t care to hold on?