Copyright © 2015 by Marie Jaskulka
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Rain Saukas
Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-426-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-004-3
Printed in the United States of America
to Jane, who can tell me anything
and Mom, who always listens
Black Fate
They fight
like two rabid rivals,
forgetting
they spawned
an innocent bystander
who listens
to every word.
Most kids
wish their parents
were still together—
not me.
She screams, “You
bastard! How could you
do this
to us?”
Dad answers in
silence, which
Mom pierces
with
curses
until Dad shuts her up
with his big man voice,
“Because I can’t
stand this anymore—
I can’t stand you and . . .”
. . . = Me?
I am above it all,
literally,
in a pink bedroom
that doesn’t fit me anymore.
Books lie
open and closed—
millions of
happily ever afters
surround me.
Desperate for air,
I go to the window.
With my rose-colored curtains
split wide open,
I check the neighborhood
spread out before me
like Legos. I am imagining
jumping—maybe
that would shut them up—
when
I spot a Random Boy,
clad in black,
walking my street,
focused and sinister,
smoke rising from him
as though he’s on fire.
He doesn’t know I exist
until
I thrust open the window
and lean out into the cold.
I don’t know why, but I
stick two fingers in my mouth
and whistle.
Everything about me goes rigid
as he turns his head
toward me
and listens—
not to me,
but to them.
“Godammit!” Mom screams.
“That is mine!”
Whatever it is
shatters
as the boy
smiles pitifully
and waves.
I wave, too,
and watch him
approach.
His eyes don’t leave mine.
When he gets to
the sidewalk
in front of me, he
watches me
for a second,
listening to my parents’
love
self-destructing,
and his smile changes.
His eyes trail down
the façade of my house, conspiring.
I can feel my world shifting as
he climbs up
onto the porch roof
adeptly
while my father screams,
unaware.
He is at my window
asking, “Rough day?”
as though he does this
sort of thing
all the time.
He gets comfortable
on the sill.
He is older than me,
but just as—I don’t know.
He offers me a cigarette,
which I take.
I don’t usually
take things from strangers,
or smoke,
and boys don’t usually
try to save me
either.
But I take the cigarette
and the light he offers
and my first drag of
nicotine relief
because
I can just tell
this random moment
is going to change me
forever.
Window
and speaks loudest
over the parts
that are hardest to hear
as though he’s heard it all before.
He doesn’t even flinch.
“Are they always like this?” he asks.
I nod.
“Are you always
so beautiful?”
I blush. I cough. I drop my cigarette,
and we both watch it flicker and spin
to the ground.
“Want to get out of here?”
I look down
and envision myself
careening
toward
the
pavement.
“I won’t let you fall.”
Before I can answer,
the door below us
bursts open.
Out flies my father.
Together, this stranger and I watch
the man in my life
desert me
without
a backward glance.
Relief
When Dad disappears,
he doesn’t take the time
to tell me good-bye;
I guess he thought it was implied.
He just gets in his car
and blows away
this town
and me.
Mom’s in audible tears.
Only this Random Boy
remembers I exist,
watching me
more closely
than I’ve ever been seen.
I am too torn up
by the goings on
inside
to hide,
so I don’t know what he sees.
“Come with me,” he says.
He nods
down a darkened street below,
where lonely kids meet to waste
their time together.
I’ve always avoided the
group on the stoop
who loiter and litter and leer
when people walk by.
I’ve been too busy
trying to evade
my parents’ crimes
to commit my own.
Hollow,
I climb down
from my childhood
room.
I bloom.
&nb
sp; He leads.
And I follow.
Meet the Kids
That’s when I start hanging
at the corner
with boys
whose hair is too long
to have parents who care.
Did my mother care?
Hard to tell with all her self-
pity in the way.
That’s when I start smoking,
because the smell matches
how my heart feels.
And my Random Boy
doesn’t ditch me.
Rather,
after he introduces me,
he backs away.
I figured he’d try to seduce me,
but instead he studies me from afar
like I am the only thing
in his sight
that isn’t transparent.
When the two of us occupy the same space,
the ground shakes
from the pressure.
Bystanders feel it, too.
“Oh girl,” some chick named Mary says,
“you are in deep shit.”
“How so?” I pushed.
“Bitches been all over that whore
since as long as I can remember,
but I’ve never seen him stare
a hole through any chick
before.”
Trying not to feel excited,
I turn my eyes his way,
after one last look.
At eye contact impact,
the gravitational pull
I felt
toward him
freaked me out, so
I stared him down
until he looked away.
Autobiography
People wonder why I sneer all the time,
why I can’t let a mistake go by
without a snide comment,
why I am
such
a
bitch.
Truth is . . .
I’m sick,
physically sick
at the amount of
assholery
in the world
as well as
all the dumbasses who are oblivious to it.
And There’s Something Else You Should Know
Mary is determined
to connect.
“You know Noelle?”
“You know Autumn?”
“No.”
“You know Ali?”
“No.”
“You know . . .
anyone?”
“No”
doesn’t satisfy her,
so I say:
“I don’t have any
girl friends.
I used to have
a friend named
Sam. We used to play
in mud-pie, glee-filled
backyards. Then
she moved to some
faraway town;
I don’t
even remember
the name.”
She’s one of my more than 2000 friends
on Facebook.
You’d think I’d
have made another
real-life
girl friend
by the age of 15,
but I haven’t met
anyone I like
enough to
change.
Making friends
just so I can lose them
is lame.
Mom’s “Wise” Words (At Least She’s Talking)
“Don’t be like me,” she says,
which is not what a parent
should say to her child.
“Don’t trust anyone, and for
God’s sake, honey, don’t
fall in love. It will trick you,
chew you up, and then
throw you up all over
the ground. End of story.”
Boys
This isn’t the first time Dad’s left.
He did it last year, too.
That time, I was open
to opening up
about it.
I was camping with
all the kids and—I don’t even
know why I did this—
but I let Brian Kipley
go up my shirt.
I never told anyone
that he squeezed my breasts
so hard they ached
for two days after. That he
kept tinkling his fingers
downward even after I
stopped him about 50 times.
I never told anyone
because I was crying
the whole time, and I
guessed he thought he was
doing me
a favor, like
therapy or something.
But it didn’t do any good
’cause he told everyone.
Meanwhile
I don’t think
she sees me
watching her
as the breeze
catches her curls
in its waggling wind fingers,
and a smile rearranges
her face.
But,
when I watch her—
as I do now
as she sways
to keep straight
on the spinning merry-go-round—
my heart beats faster than is healthy
as my blood
races down down down . . .
My memories drain
to make room
in my head
for only her.
Get This
My mom found a poem I wrote
called,
“I Hate You So Much It’s Love Again.”
It was about her.
She said,
“How can you talk about hating me
so much
you want to run away?”
“But you missed the point,” I tell her.
“It’s love again.”
She holds the paper
(stolen from the floor of my bedroom)
as though she has the right
and reads aloud:
“You are a sorry excuse for a mother,
a woman,
to let a man
ruin you.”
She explores my face;
she doesn’t recognize me
inside these true, callous words.
That much is clear in her blurry eyes.
The older I get,
the more I see
she doesn’t really know me
at all,
just some kid
I can’t remember being.
I snatch the rogue poem
from her trembling fingers,
crush those words literally, symbolically,
and toss them onto the overflowing trash bin.
She watches, but doesn’t
wipe her tears away.
She says, “You have no idea
how hard it is
to lose your heart,
and I hope you never do.”
I want to say,
Didn’t I lose him, too?
But before I do,
she retreats
to her
bedroom/cave
and shuts out
the world,
including me.
Getting to Know All About Us
“What year are you?”
“Sophomore.”
“Got a boyfriend?”
“Why?”
Like I’m going to tell him I’ve never had a boyfriend.
“So I know who I got to beat up.”
“Where do you go?”
I turn the tables.
“I’m not in school.
Graduated in June.
Taking a year off
before . . .”
“Before?”
(shrugs)
“College?”
“Naaaah, not my sty
le.”
“Job?”
“Girl, loving you takes up ALL my time.”
I blush, despite myself—
and yes, he notices.
Confessing
Mary has her hair
in pig (how appropriate) tails
and her school skirt
rolled
so her hem
is way more than
two inches
above
her knee.
I swear to God.
Catholic girls are
hella slutty.
Don’t be a slut-shamer,
I tell myself.
But sometimes it’s hard
not to take another girl’s
promiscuity
personally.
The sudden competition
sprung
from someone who
a minute ago
was a friend.
Me, I’ve got on
a plain white T
and too-tight jeans
that cut into my
belly when I sit. I also
don the
requisite
hoodie to
hide
the heart
I wear
on my sleeve.
Mary bends
over without
bending her knees
—ugh—
and when I turn
to see what Random Boy
thinks of all this
teenage waste-
land,
I find him staring
at me.
He nods me closer
and I go to his side.
“Is she for real?”
“You’re not enjoying her show?”
“I don’t get slapstick.”
“No?”
He leans in so I can smell him;
he is
minty tobacco fresh.
“I prefer your exes and ohs
to that ho’s
any day.”
My grin is involuntary,
my gasp,
audible.
I admit it.
I am smitten as a kitten
with that
Random Boy.
Playing Cool
These days,
it’s hard
to keep up
with the changing
styles. They trend
too fast,
peak and fade
before I know
they exist.
It’s hard
to have a permanent
heart
in a disposable
world.
So when he leans toward me,
I lean away.
When he tells me I’m beautiful,
I make an ugly face
and snort.
But when he weaves his way
into my daydreams,
I let the thought of him
caress my mind.
I don’t admit it to myself
or to him,
but I let those thoughts of him in.
Getting Ready
First, I draw a ballpoint blue
tattoo under my belly button—
not that he’s going to see it. But I
carefully let the smallest
bit show. Then, I spray the orchid
perfume he complimented one time.
I’d be lying if I said
I didn’t think about him
while painting black lines around my eyes.