The words I intended for you come apart
in these photos of the hastily built picnic
shelter hovering above our
initials in the gray arcs of concrete, shimmering
with sweet Coke spills in summer …

Your face still baits me throughout these nervous adult years.
I recall 5th grade letters never sent,
           and feeling like a wet dog.
I keep waiting for such elaborate gadgetry
of memory to stop working.

Now I remember you, now I don't ….

Your on-the-go style and Vera Wang curves
have long replaced tom boy thighs.

My memories of you lie suspended like
cheap Chinese lanterns or $2.00 yellow parkas
in the humid Ozark wind …

We used to get lost in a cache of Missouri heat,
scratchy grass, and tangled heaps of blackberries
behind the bike trail …

Now you live in a metropolitan corridor.
I am home alone,
trying to disconnect from television.

Once you dug into the cupboard for half-stale macaroni.
Now you steal phrases off blogs and post-it notes …

We milk cigarettes and cell phones. Once we milked
peaches and rust …

Nancy Drew and Creem magazine no longer
rest open on our makeshift desk.
Idiot's Guides and Frommer's have
soaked up our old amphetamine money.

What happened to your tipsy Christmas
whispers, your cocoa lips?

Do we still maintain?

Vitamins keep us burning like bulbs, in slow degrees.

Eyeglasses fog during workouts.
We wonder if Pop still cooks porkchops
that look like bits of folded leather …

I turn to page 158 of Girl Interrupted,
wish I was in Akron, co-founding
a self-help group specifically for survivors
of graham crackers.

Do you recall air raid sirens
during first period reading groups …
crunching down below desks —
the imagined orange mushroom cloud
rising like a omen?

I don't believe in God or communists anymore,
only the inconvenience of emotions among men.

Once I was unwilling to give up the Mickey Mouse show,
now I shrug off doctors.

TV became our super-highway
the constant salesmen's pitch
drowned out table talk, cottage cheese,
and President Carter's last gasp …

These words are fields we make our way back to …

We used to want poker cards and sex in border towns
as we washed white bread down with microwave milkshakes,
now we are jealous of our friend's medications.

I can't imagine putting pennies in a gallon jar anymore.
Perhaps it was watching Khomeini, our jigsaw puzzles,
Tootsie Roll pig-outs, or my own crooked toe
that corrupted me for good.

You used to rumble about reptiles, demons, and fantastic creatures,
now it's the IRS and quick fixes.

Come crawl with me back into the trailer park,
where we'll abolish forgetting.