Dating Down Read Free

brain
    dreaming of nothing other than the
    taste of your lips
    on mine
    the smell of your hair
    brushing by
    the heat of your shoulder
    bumping me
    percolating under my skin
    your dangerous smile keeping me up all night
    like a strung-out mess
    filled to the brim and still thirsty
    for more.
    I drink it all in
    and wait for
    you
    to pour me
    another
    cup cup

At School
    April looks at me, knowingly
    shifting her pile of books
    staring me up and down.
    April:So, who’s the boy?
    She’s good that way.
    Gavin tips his bowler hat to us as April whines—
    I’m shutting her out
    storing secrets
    she knows there’s a new love
    and he’s not Ted.
    What gives?
    Gavin: sm You didn’t tell her about the old guy?
    Me: sm Don’t be jealous.
    April: sm Old guy? Am I missing something?
    Me: sm He’s in college, well, was.
    Gavin: sm And tall. And cute.
    I blush.
    Me: sm He is cute. And a free spirit.
    April: sm Free spirit?
    Ted walks by,
    arms around some
    sweet-looking sophomore
    speaking softly, saying something sports-related
    probably.
    He sm spots me
    stops smiling.
    I small pretend not to notice.
    Ted can move on, right?
    Feeling my nervous energy,
    April springs into action—
    Where’d you meet X?
    How old is he?
    How cute?
    Then inevitably,
    something triggers her into a story
    about Ralph.
    She is, after all, obsessed with Ralph.
    Clueless, clueless Ralph.
    April: sm He lives with musicians?
    Think their band’s as good as Ralph’s?
    Here we go.
    I listen to The Problem with Ralph
    up two flights of stairs and
    through the final bell.
    There will be more
    to come on this subject
    at lunch.
    This is as certain
    as homework.

High School Ted
    High school boys play with toys they are, yes, they are that young. High school boys play with toys they are,
yes, they are that young. I don’t
know why they like to play with
toys, act like boys, make loud noise
just to annoy us, when the girls are growing up. They play with toys it
gives them joy, but girls don’t see
the fun. It’s not fun, no longer fun.
It’s dumb. How come they enjoy it? High school girls like to shake their brain, bounce their curls. They want
a guy not a boy. They want to flirt. What’s the hurt? They want to court.
Go out in short skirts. Paint the town red. Go head to head. But mostly what they want to do is anything and everything and something else but be with that boy, that high school boy,
Ted.

Chemistry
    Mr. Tanner scribbles
    Antoine Lavoisier
    on the whiteboard.
    April looks at me like,
    Who the heck is that?
    She really should crack open a chemistry book.
    Mr. Tanner scratches,
    conservation of mass
    and faces the mass of blank stares.
    Mr. Tanner scribes,
    mass that’s isolated cannot change over time …
remains the same … unchanged.
    As Mr. Tanner explains,
    I contemplate my own chemistry.
    What is X doing right now?
    Is he sitting at some other girl’s table?
    Is he thinking of me?
    Is he working right now?
    Or hanging out with his roommates?
    Is he doing twenty-two-year-old stuff?
    Artsy stuff?
    He’s certainly not doing
    Chemistry class stuff—
    listening to a teacher
    with male-pattern baldness
    ramble on about matter.
    And what matters is our chemistry.
    But how could X possibly connect
    with a high school girl?
    A girl like me?
    An isolated mass waiting to be unstuck.
    Changed.
    April passes me a note.
    Carefully, I uncurl the paper and read it.
    Another quandary over Ralph.
    Talk about bad chemistry.

Lunch
    We are the usual suspects
    at our typical table.
    April slides in first
    Gavin snuggles up to George,
    squeezing some room for me.
    I plop down my lunch of
    Twizzlers
    PB&J
    Chex Mix
    Twizzling and crunching as
    The Problem with Ralph, Pt. II begins.
    April: sm What comes after this?
    George: sm What’s the big deal?
    Gavin: sm What’s a few drugs among friends?
    April: sm I just don’t see how we can be together when—
    Gavin: sm You