PROMISSORY

For Dez

We are far and away from the days we were homecoming queens of

the convenience store parking lot, fuel pump island girls who smelled

of candy and gasoline, we welcomed in the cars whose bass shook the

ground like furious dancing gods

and offered ourselves up to them

when we knew what our youth and cleavage and the

well-timed lick of a blow pop could get us,

but not yet what they would cost us.

We never bothered to read the promissory notes

we signed

to be young

and girls

and without curfew.

We assumed the terms to be ours.

We could not know what we would leave behind

in wandering naive from our hilltop

that we would come to know what it means

to be debt-full and woman

and still with no one calling us home.

What tribeless girls we were

when we stumbled upon one another

and got our heartstrings tangled

what a fortune of unbalance that pushed us together

that kept us tethered.

I thank the rumble gods for you

for your steadying arms in the darkness.

One of these days we’ll scrape enough gas money

from the floor mats to run away

someplace where we don’t have to wear this skin like bark.

Someplace where we will not spend

any more years piling on scabs

until we are crab-shelled laughter ghosts.

We will be unsalted hot pearls.

We will stand on a beach tasting a salt spray not made of tears and

Midwest wind after everyone else has gone to sleep.

We will peel down to the soft fruit

and for once it won’t hurt

and for once it will be on our terms.