Jessi paints me in a sea of pinks and
purples, sitting in a pile of fictional
hyacinths. Meanwhile I write us hard
into existence. Neither of us are May babies
but we’ve got a lot going on. How lucky we
were to meet in the last year of our childhood,
if you’ll accept a flexible definition of
the word. We would have mixed together
at any age, melding our minds with lines of
poetry and Bowie, and that’s why it’s so great
that we got a head start.
You knew me when I was nineteen,
coughing clouds of cannabis. I knew you
when you were twenty, and ran away to London.
I knew your mom’s narrow womb, the way you ripped
right out of it, and you knew oxygen flowing into my
grandmother’s sun damaged sternum. We knew
each other at twenty three, knew your block of 12th street
and mine. I knew your skin, where it was inked
At twenty two with lilacs, and you knew mine, where it was
pierced at twenty one and then scarred and then pierced again.
It’s that time of the year once more –
We’re twenty four, and reading “Peanut Butter” by Eileen
Myles in the bar, stepping outside for our
companions’ summer smokes. No chair will ever be
goldilocks enough for us chicks.
You will find us lounging on floors all over
Manhattan, though what we really want
is to be inhabiting the wood panels in
Brooklyn. I know your future – it’s overripe,
dripping with the love of a woman and colored
in with the same three beautiful tones.
You know mine (here is where you say mine).
I run half a mile along 12th street to admire
What you’ve been painting on your walls.
Let’s bike the whole city, and learn to love ourselves.
Neither of us are May babies, but we love the late Spring,
And I dare to say that we’ve got a lot going on.
