It is not likely I will be in the room
when Erika Edwards spits out her baby
so I watch crazy young women
with blurred-out vaginas give birth on T.V.
They push, scream, and share
their journey with America.
Erika and I used to share
a small container of hummus and tear
pieces of pita bread in half.
And we called each other’s mothers Mom,
and we teased each other’s little brothers,
and looked for virtues in each other’s stepfathers.
We met seconds before high school started
at Skate World in Jacksonville, Florida.
We were drinking cola in shorts, watching
an always doomed hockey practice in August.
There was a woman in the stands
who was probably the age Erika and I
are now. The woman pointed
to the goalie as her new fiancé.
When the team broke for water, we went into action.
We skated up to the goalie, who had seen us
in the stands with his beloved and asked him,
"Are you going to be our new Daddy?"
He looked to his new fiancé. She screamed,
"These are not my children!"
"Why do you always deny us, Mom?”
said we, losing our straight faces,
falling into laughter.
Our high school was wildly unrealistic.
Erika directed a hit version of Spoon River
that went to State Thespians.
I exchanged letters with laureates and they
placed my words next to Pulitzer Prize winners.
Our 16th birthday crowned in a conga line
eighty strangers long at MGM
Studios in Walt Disney World. I had latched
onto Erika's waist as she exited the dance party
and the others gathered behind. The delight
on her face, to see she had eighty followers
is not one I have seen since. She twisted the snake
back through a second time, knowingly.
I attempted to conga on my 29th birthday
without Erika at Cecil's Bar. The dart players
shouted "No" in slow motion, above the music.
From fifteen to thirty, half my life
has been called in to Erika's receiver.
From Disney to Cecil's, from high school
prodigies to clerks in orange smocks.
See, I'm worried that she needs me,
that things were better when we were together,
that motherhood is the real world
and I'm left behind in a teenage
unrealistic one or worse:
I am breaking my water, crowning, delighting,
pushing, screaming and sharing with blurred out intentions
my journey, with America, without Erika.

Saffron dust on your car,
Messing up your straight
Hair-sprayed hair,
Losing and sometimes
Winning thumb war,
--I am trying to write the spell
That makes me love
You, surely.
Call it willful
Optimism,
From which I asked you
To be mine.
Cat fur on couch pillows,
Comic books filling every chair,
Ice cubes melting in a glass,
--I want to write you
A poem that’s like
A car bomb
Traveling invisible
Beside you, along with you,
Turning when you turn,
Slowing down when you slow.
And just when you
Get suspicious
And make eye contact
(Divine eye contact),
With me, the driver
Of the car bomb poem,
I push the button,
Like changing a radio dial.
But instead of new music
Or new talk
There are sparks, shrapnel,
Smoke and joy,
And it kills me, the driver
And it kills you, the target
And it kills us so well
We never go back
To whom we were before.
So here is your Boom!
And here is your Pow!
And here is your bride
Reaching to place
A band on your new hand.