supernovice

Cadence: your boots down Alvorado,
along the bus stop, near the Safeway.
You were asking all the
other black-clad girls for advice
and had ambitious eyes--
A snapshot of you.

We went down to the wharf one night;
you made a joke about falling in
and being attacked by an otter...
I told you about the
Santee, Cooper, and Ashley rivers,
where the waves
roll brown instead of aqua marine.
I told you
about the decay of the South, in general,
and how it had all meant something more
to better people than we'll ever be - all lost now.
Times have had defiance, nonconformity,
and indomitable will.
The fortitude it must have taken to put it all on the line...
Fuck you, and what are you going to do about it -
all sullied by bigotry and narrow-minded idiots.
All that passion and rebellion reduced
to mindless talk-show anecdotes -
A far cry from the cool,
cleanliness of this city, by comparison.
You asked me about places I've been,
all the cities you'd never seen.
You flattered me; made me
feel world-aware,
even weary,
reminded me that I'm just barely older than you.

"I have a boyfriend," you said, kiss, kiss.
You always do; always have.
Since when did we ever
let that stand between us (and the ocean)?

I remember you in a bus terminal in Los Angeles,
herded from line to line,
waiting with a guy I barely knew.
I thought of you alone across the country...
Every thousand miles,
another hour lost
to invisible lines that run across the landscape.
I didn't know then that you'd never, once, left me at all...