Acrostics in which neither of us say the word loneliness

1

paws up & fingers down, my boy’s here to catch the first bit of snow in his mouth.
origami sunsets fold into quarters. i watch his hands and i think i would like to hold them,
smile into his palm and hum with melancholy,
scream a secret like a prayer. say that i’m yours and you’re mine. tell me this is
everything and nothing – one dream, one kiss, one matchstick and one mistake.
september 2013 drives past me in a dirty pick-up truck and i am so lonely, yet
somewhere down south i have this memory of you and a girl called crysmalida.
i imagine her to be everything i am not. summer fling, five-second rule, forgettable.
oblivious to what i am to you, what you are to me. everything and
nothing: we made a blood pact in fifth grade & you are in my veins, still.

2

disco lights & classical music echo in this garden of hushed noises.
universes away, i think that blue and pink
aren’t perceived as different, but as two shades of the same colour.
love and loneliness burn in my mouth like the vodka i refused to drink. i see the world
in black and white. tell them i’m a girl because that’s the easiest thing to say.
television static buzzes grey and i think of your eyes in this dim light.
yolk spills from the table, and the boy i see in the mirror is a stranger.

3

red like crimson like scarlet like rubies like your hands and your
earrings your lipstick and also the dream at the base of your neck,
coagulating.      i know fancy words too, richard.
let’s update the scoreboard, put my name on top & let me
ascend with a toothpick sticking out of my mouth. this is summertime, this is
madness, a museum, the murder scene, your masterpiece.
a boy who embodies the liquid of dusk stands before me like mercury;
thermometer and glass bound. did you think of freddie? most people do.
i don’t know where this is headed, or what any of this means.
on the plus side, there’s something new for me to learn now. i’ll take it.
never look a gift horse in the mouth, they say. i’ll leave the horse at the door, then?

Header photograph © Marybeth Cohowicz DeYoung.