[poem]: jennifer
jennifer
We’re walking down Queen Street, and you’re telling me stories
about the time you broke your fingers beating up
two guys in fifth grade.
I’m trying to imagine it,
you, a school uniform white as paint,
biting and spitting and pulling on hair and
screaming like a dog. You’re as good as my sister,
the one I never had but called Jennifer all the same.
You’re not scared of anything.
Sometimes I feel you trying to fix me,
walking down the gravel on our driveway in Milton,
walking down Queen Street,
walking down a dead end with your fingers on my back
like a radio dial, and I’ll think about telling you that I’m in love
with the ten-year-old kid who lives a block away
guitar chords in the early hours
the sizzle of rain
candle wax on the bottom of a mirrored dish
the cool smell of your linen.
Those are good days, and then sometimes I feel
so sick I can barely think. When I’m lying in bed
with the burnt taste of carbon in the back of my mouth, shivering,
I think a bridge opens up for me
so white I could lick it, take it into my belly,
breed it.
Always so far.
Little Jennifer, hard-knuckled and never afraid –
you’d tell me to fight, but I’m naked at heart and I
thought I’d killed you in a mirror ten years ago.
You’re the sister I never grew into, or met, or gave birth to, or swallowed.
You’ll bury me one day.
We’re walking down Queen Street, and you’re telling me stories
about the time you broke your fingers beating up
two guys in fifth grade.
I’m trying to imagine it,
you, a school uniform white as paint,
biting and spitting and pulling on hair and
screaming like a dog. You’re as good as my sister,
the one I never had but called Jennifer all the same.
You’re not scared of anything.
Sometimes I feel you trying to fix me,
walking down the gravel on our driveway in Milton,
walking down Queen Street,
walking down a dead end with your fingers on my back
like a radio dial, and I’ll think about telling you that I’m in love
with the ten-year-old kid who lives a block away
guitar chords in the early hours
the sizzle of rain
candle wax on the bottom of a mirrored dish
the cool smell of your linen.
Those are good days, and then sometimes I feel
so sick I can barely think. When I’m lying in bed
with the burnt taste of carbon in the back of my mouth, shivering,
I think a bridge opens up for me
so white I could lick it, take it into my belly,
breed it.
Always so far.
Little Jennifer, hard-knuckled and never afraid –
you’d tell me to fight, but I’m naked at heart and I
thought I’d killed you in a mirror ten years ago.
You’re the sister I never grew into, or met, or gave birth to, or swallowed.
You’ll bury me one day.