Jenna
Location
They found you under moonlit skies
In trees that shook and rippled, they found you like
A GPS finds coordinates slightly
Astray.
They found you over earthen floors, drops behind your ears from leaking faucets and eyes, and they tried to cover up the smell with Windex and take-out and sorry for the mess, we're rennovating, because dangling shingles meant neighbors closed their shades and dangling smiles and hair and breasts meant you closed your eyes like
A game of hide-and-seek with seeker irrelevant and hider
Not yet found.
Always another day, they
Said, and you couldn't deny
That their eyes and voices were
Heavy with conviction like
Humidity in the air
And they believed like children in Santa Clause
Blinded by presents
Beneath the tree.
Thy found you before posters, before penny price tags of women with
Horizons for hips
They found you staring as if
It would make the paper crumble and fall and she would step through and you would glimpse the secrets her waxed and sculpted body held
But you were never strong
Enough
And trapped within the peasant the
Majesty stirred
Dollar for three screamed fiery helvetica but they
Wouldn't let you near.
The first time he handled you like
A delicate family heirloom, kept
You bundled in a drawer between the cassette and the cobwebs and the bibles with annotations now illegible, folded corners arbitrary as roulette
Took you out for polishing and stroked
You like intricate handiwork
Fingers interlaced upon contact
Lips were stiff like long
Neglected limbs, and your tongue tasted
New flavors with every
Friday night, dusty bottle, sparkling blue streaks of eyeshadow, mascara-laced lashes that pierced memories and resolutions to their liquid cores, flickering street lamp, dangling neon sign, finger extended, stool twisting, dress shredding to shards of dignity scattered in a bread crumb path from three-county highway and one-horse town fireworks and crumpled smiles to careening taxis and bustling seas of kings and beggars and smiles and giggles and kisses as real as your nails and your chest and your Hey big spender.
They found you on a bare mattress with
Darkness pressing, they said
Morning is coming soon.
And you knew that the only
Morning was 3AM behind tiny
Doors, moving as
He danced within you
Hoping he wouldn't taste the tears