Jackson

My first poem for Hobart.

I fell in love at all of sixteen and don’t you say I wasn’t devoted.

My baby’s eyes were brown but you can tell he wishes they were blue

And I don’t see what it matters, but I can see it does between him and me.

We’re so clever that he can joke about discovering me the way his progenitors did with tanks and guns. My mother likes that he reads philosophy, he tells me I kiss like a boy. He gets it half-right.

In my hometown of San Juan he plays half-tourist, half-conquistador. On the beach we could be a postcard. Standing just in front of the water, we could be honeymoon-makers. The sand that had always been just sand becomes ephemeral, temporary, new.

Hair shining like gold and full of summer. Lit by shimmers of possibility as something sinewy behind my eyes would stretch wide enough to catch a glimpse of a mirror winking to the mind of God. I’d spend the rest of forever chasing after it. Just one more summer, one more shore.

He tells me he’s blinded by the light. I’ve never been as far as Ashberry and I want to tell him I wish we grew up together, that I long for a comradery beyond desire, the sun-shadowed silence of best friends and arm wrestling. Stillness and breath. That when we go swimming together I wish I had a flat chest. That I wonder if this feels so marvelously new and frustrating for him too.