Nightingale

I drove by 1982
last summer

Your house
was unkempt
overgrown and neglected
in a suburban decay
kind of way

No pony-tailed
Tom-boy
training-bra
Atari-girls

No imaginary intrigue
no television fantasies
buried under I Hate Pretty Pony
mattresses

No chess or cello,
or plank-walking
over ravines
No sleuthing or storytelling
No trespassing mischief
No BMX bikes over dirt hills
or making little brothers cry

Hard to imagine
This was the locus of
intricate realms
we created together

Our imaginings were
so much better,
levitated above
the listless, oppressive
sameness of
a pressed board
cluster of houses
in an alfalfa field
in Nowhere,
USA

No big-wide-world
waiting as seen
from six-foot homemade stilts
No sugar highs
on Big Gulp Slurpeez

Just wall-to-wall beige,
Country Tchotchke
and fake stone facades

In another lifetime
you would be 19
and pregnant,
marrying your
Super-Smart self
down the river
for fear of
loveless solitude
or maybe
hope of
love's fullness
complete

You, the only other
Sharp Girl
Brimming with opinions
and clever insights
Cello, channeling
your brilliance,

Calling you
from 1982