Sara With No H

Of all the dumb things I’ll do today,
here are two:
One—
Admit that I can’t remember the last name
of the first girl I put my fingers inside.
Two—
Decide to write a poem about it.
Sara was a Sara with no H, I remember
this much, okay?
She was small and blonde,
what would become
a trend for me
my type, so they say.
Had a stud through her tongue
that she’d let peek out between pursed
lips during writing workshop.
It would drive my friend Lauren crazy,
in a bad way, though.
Not me.
Sara won my heart for all of 84 hours—
that’s all it would take it to get her out
of my system, and me out of hers—
after I watched from the steps outside
100 Beacon
as she stepped in front of a red Ford
so eager to end her life right then and there,
it was,
that I closed my eyes tight.
But Sara with no H pointed to the Walk sign in white
that had sent her
the all-clear
and then turned back to Family Ford
and pegged them the bird.
Sara was a poet in a fiction writing workshop.
For this reason alone, most of us hated her.
Sure,
most of us had dabbled
in some sort of poetry
writing in the past.
Not me, though.
This is my first.
As though you couldn’t tell.
This was back in ’92 or ’93.
My friend Lauren would remember this
as my “bad times.”
So imagine my surprise
Seventeen years later
and after having discovered Crossfit,
which looked nothing like
punk-rock fitness
to me if I’ve ever seen it
Sara and I would share another
brief,
awkward,
but totally
amusing
encounter.
Let the fucking record
show—
she recognized me.
(I was sort of
stressing over
how I’d work the word
Fuck
into this post.)
When she said,
“Angela,
do you know who
I am?”
I had to smile, say
“Sorry,”
and I squeezed my water
bottle so hard
that I felt wetness seep
between my shoelaces,
the mesh of my
Crossfit shoes.
I hate moments like
these so much.
“I’m Sara,” she said.
And then it all came back
because people’s faces,
bodies,
hair styles
may change, but their eyes
never do.
“From Emerson?”
she said.
I said,
“With no H.”
And she said,
“Oh, you remember
well, then.”
And I smiled again,
remembering,
actually,
how almost every woman’s
pussy felt like hers
for a while after.
Can’t say when it
changed,
or stopped,
but it did.
Like this.

Filed under: Pabulum & Poetry by angelatav
5 Comments »