Sodade

a poem by natalie walsh

they look like that girl who was friends with that girl everyone wanted to fuck in high school

& high school inevitably conjures the face of that boy my brother said i was in love with

the one in a peppermint button down who looks just like that actor in that movie about two boys who fall in love

the one i watch on airplanes & hope the waning light will conceal the way i cry without noise

remembering us on a terraced evening looking at him looking at his city he will one day burn to smithereens with his cigarette smoke

the lovers stand on either side of the hatchback

not knowing yet that in a few hours time they will become lovers

& in a few hours time they will also become strangers

the sky is a cobalt blue if you lit cobalt on fire

there are no birds in the soundless summer evening

only city lights far enough away to make a boy feel bigger than his shoulders

he runs the tip of four fingers over his chest, soft with humidity & his mother’s lemon balm laundry detergent

the lilacs are bent backwards

craning their necks to see what i cannot describe

they tend to cut this part out of the movies

when they become one body & one boy swallows the other boy’s breath

& i think of the one in the button down

& the way he too wanted to fuck that girl

& the way he did

& the way i hated her in the aftermath of my longing

subsided only to the tune of instrumental music on park benches

watching as champagne spills over their sundresses

sloshing out their laughter

& i think how they look like that girl who was friends with that girl everyone fucked in high school

& naturally i think how if he takes a cigarette to his city i’ll take a lighter to the cobalt sky & maybe that way i’ll know how to describe it too