Suzannah Russ Spaar

I played football with the boys

but only with a flick of finger

on the diner’s gluey table. Elbows

 

peeled away with ketchup

patches. I patched up my jeans,

cut off the frays, turned them

 

from shorts to skirt to a scrap

on the bag in the attic, full

and brushed with dust.

 

The diner is gone now

though I still wear its shirt

—a large slice of moon.

 

I do not recognize the home

when I go there. I do not

remember the litanies

 

I repeated. Did I expect

to be a Litany, folded over

into the tightest square?

 

There are many songs

I only sing

with the volume way up.

 

I can say anything, never heard

a friend scream until

on a roller coaster and loved

 

that collection of bodies,

unconstrained and strapped

to the tracks. I gasped

 

when I first kissed the boy

on fourth street, wrestled grease

from my chin. I went to a protest

 

there; the bodies

screamed out. I wore a blue dress

when a man held a gun to my middle.

 

It was bright blue, toxic, stained

with ketchup and I left it far away.

There will be a prayer without a blue dress.

 

There will be no more scraps for me

to cut into napkins. I have washed my face

every day since the boy in first grade

 

called it dirty. Rot repeated, then away.