NAMES
We let go of our names together
on the same night.
You sleep over and I play
the portable vinyl player my parents
got me for my seventeenth birthday.
It’s blue and slick like the hood of a retro car.
I only have one record and it’s my dad’s old Beatles album
Yellow Submarine.
We listen for hours on repeat,
talking and talking about summer ending,
and we start listing all the beautiful things we’ll miss:
kissing behind the crooked tombstone in the graveyard at dusk,
cheese fries at the snack shack,
filling Tupperware with fireflies.
You give me a rainbow pin
for my backpack and show me
your own matching one.
You say, “If anyone asks
you can say you just like those colors.”
Even though the door is shut
you’re still shy as you put your arm
around me in my new queen-sized bed.
I miss lying with you in the bunk bed,
now moved to the attic.
The bunk bed was more …
I don’t know …
romantic, maybe.
We don’t want to ruin the sleepovers
by letting anyone know that we’re dating.
We’re talking about getting coffee at
the diner on Main Street and all of
a sudden you say, “The word lesbian
sounds mythical, like a dragon or a siren …
I don’t know how I feel about calling myself that.
The word just feels
wrong for me.”
I say, “I know what you mean.”
You look stunning in your new/not-new jean vest
and red T-shirt with the space rover on it
that we just got from Goodwill.
I put on my pajamas:
a soft white tank top and polka-dot shorts.
You turn over and rest your head
on my chest. You kiss my clavicle.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” I say, scared
that you don’t love me anymore
and that the summer is going to be over
and never ever come back.
“I think I want to buy a chest binder.
You can get them online.
Sometimes for only like thirty bucks.”
You stand up and brush your hands
over your chest.
“They’ll be flat, like
more than a sports bra.”
“How are you going to order it?” I ask.
“I have one of those Visa gift cards
I got from CVS.”
“Oh, okay.”
I’m burning jealous. I didn’t know
until now how much I want one, too.
I’ve read about them on Tumblr
but never seen one in person.
“And I want to send it to your house
because … my parents can’t find it.”
“Of course,” I say, knowing
that my parents never remember to get packages.
“I’ve thought about getting one, too.”
You pause, surveying me
in the gentle way you do, the way
a pool of water might look
at someone.
“Do you not want me to, like …
touch your boobs anymore?” you ask,
and I laugh.
“Yeah, maybe not anymore.”
“Same for me,” you say.
You roll over and
look at my pastel-pink ceiling fan.
“One more thing,” you say.
“I don’t want you to call me [****] anymore.”
“What should I call you?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I see your old name like a moth,
dusty-winged and glowing.
The name escapes out the
open window and into the soupy
August night,
into forever.
I sit up and cup my hands.
“What are you doing?” you ask.
“I want to let mine go too,” I say.
YOU
On the first day
of first grade
you were the only kid who was dressed nice
in a white button-up shirt and dressy tan pants
like something we would wear to synagogue
only you don’t go to synagogue,
you go to church, actually specifically
you go to mass, which you tell
me is different from church
but also seems still pretty much
the same idea as synagogue.
You were worried about getting
dirty on the playground with your
nice clothes
so we walked and collected caterpillars
under the big oak tree.
I told you that I was from Hawaii
because I thought it sounded more
interesting than being from
up the street.
You said you were
from Puerto Rico and
I didn’t know where that was.
You said you had a brother
named José
and I was jealous because
I didn’t have any siblings.
AS WE GOT OLDER I NOTED ALL THE THINGS I MORE-THAN-LIKE ABOUT YOU:
1. Your excitement when you draw a new character.
Now that we have phones you just
text me pictures but when
we were little you’d call the house phone
and describe your drawings to me, saying
“And his arms are really bright blue
and his eyes are brown and he can shoot
fire from his eyes.”
2. The way you hoist yourself and me up into the trees in the park.
I stay on the low branches as
you climb higher.
Your brother
taught you how to climb trees.
When the two of you were both little
you’d try to climb to see if
you could talk to God,
shouting at the clear sky,
trying to get through to him.
3. The way you watch me bake banana bread and always crack the eggs just right.
I can never do it.
I used to be the “egg cracker” for Mom when she’d bake but
I’m always too gentle.
I push the shell slowly until it gives
so tiny flecks of shell always
end up in the batter.
You don’t hesitate,
a steady flick of the wrist,
a clean fracture of the shell.
FIRST AND SECOND KISS
I was technically your second kiss
even though you say you really think of me as your first.
Jackson Williams was your technical first kiss
at the park in the summer before fifth grade.
We were all doing dares, a bunch of kids from town
and you and me. Jackson dared you to kiss him,
so you did. You said it was squishy and awful.
Really, I think a first kiss can only count
if it’s not a dare or it’s with someone you like.
The next day we were alone by the creek
and you asked me, “Will you dare me to kiss you?”
I said, “I dare you,”
and you kissed me longer than a dare kiss.
We were quiet after and then kept talking
as if it hadn’t happened.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM YOU
I can’t hang out tonight ![](/files/media/file/2022-03-22-144448/large_blobid0.jpg)
I have youth group at church.
Mom would destroy me
if I tried to get out of it.
Maybe tomorrow?
You haven’t told anyone
we’re together, right?
I keep worrying Mom already knows somehow.
I swear moms know everything.
Me:
Don’t worry!
I’d never tell anyone. I promise.
ME
Our house is quiet
and we don’t use the television.
Most nights you can find me
and Mom and Dad sitting
in the living room all reading books.
Dad reads books about history.
Mom reads books with stories
and sometimes books of poetry.
Dad says he could never read poetry.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
Sometimes Mom will read a poem aloud.
My favorite poems are
the ones that don’t make sense.
I read fantasy books
and sometimes mysteries.
I also read about
history like Dad, but different history.
Last year I was into ancient history,
especially Greece and Rome.
I know that it was standard back then
but I loved that men wore dresses.
The idea
excited me.
To me it meant that
people dressed differently and
maybe someday it’ll change again.
This year it’s the American Revolution.
I have to be honest, I got into it because
I loved that men dressed so fancy during the 1700s.
They wore wigs and heels—how fun is that?
As I read more, though,
I’m interested in how differently they thought
about war back then.
What did it mean to stand in rows
and take aim?
How did they understand being
American?
ONLY CHILD
Sometimes I’m jealous
of your big brother, José.
I guess if I had a sibling, I might feel differently.
You’re always rolling your eyes
when I ask if you could
invite José to join us
when we hang out.
You say, “He’s like practically an adult,
he doesn’t want to chill with us.”
I’d never tell you
but I think José is cool.
I know it’s super weird
but when I was figuring stuff out
about being a boy
I thought
a lot about José.
He’s the kind of man I want to be.
He plants basil by the side of your house.
He cooks instant oatmeal for afternoon snacks.
He writes little poems for you and leaves them in your shoes.
He’s the kind of boy everyone should want to be.
KUTZTOWN
We talk all the time
about moving away,
but sometimes I wonder
if we’d miss Kutztown.
Not the people,
but the sprawling fields
and patches of forest
between farms.
I think I would miss
the cows.
How they lie down
before a rainstorm.
I do think we need a coffee shop, though.
Ever since the diner on Main Street closed
we’ve had to get
drinks at the Malt Shoppe:
melting blue slushies
and thick clumpy milkshakes.
Kutztown is boring.
There’s no one like
us in Kutztown.
I feel lonely in Kutztown,
even when it’s
me and you
looking down Main Street
in the summer and debating
whether or not to
go to the thrift shop
for the second time
in a week.
I would miss the market, though,
that’s for sure.
Wooden baskets of apples
and warm doughnuts in glass cases.
Your favorite treat there
is the apricot scones.
If we moved away
I’d have to learn how
to bake them for you.
FOLK FESTIVAL
Every summer the Kutztown Folk Festival comes
to the fairgrounds across town with
the smells of fried blooming onion and fresh kettle corn
and the sounds of fiddles and folk songs.
There are all kinds of dancing
and theater and hit-and-miss engines
and snack shacks and wooden toys
and baking contests.
Basically, all the high schoolers work there in the summer.
This past year, you and me
worked at stands across from each other on the fairway.
Me at the ox roast stand
and you at the apple pie booth.
(I always wished we could switch.)
I was probably the first and only vegetarian
to work at the ox roast stand.
(Why didn’t we get a say in which stands we worked?)
We walked home together each day,
only holding hands
after we were far away from the festival.
We would look around the fairgrounds each day
and see straight couples of all ages—
an old man feeding his wife
a greasy home fry, a couple we knew from school
climbing the hay bales together—
and we’d know we couldn’t do that.
Not yet. Once
I grabbed your hand by accident
and in the few seconds we held hands after our shifts
a man walking past saw us.
He stared and stared and stared. We walked a foot apart
the rest of the way out of the fairgrounds.
Later, you told me, “We should be more careful.”
I told you I agreed, but alone in my room I cried.
I didn’t want to feel
so scared.
MALT SHOPPE
I guess I would miss the Malt Shoppe, too,
if we moved away from Kutztown.
It has red-and-white checker-patterned walls
and spills 1950s hits from its chrome door.
On a really crowded night in July
sometimes I felt like no one would notice us
or maybe they’d just think we were two close friends
splitting a sundae and sitting across from each other
at one of the red booths.
We’d ask for two cherries on top of our sundae
and race to try to tie the stems inside our mouths.
You could always do it—
holding up your little knotted stem
as I laughed and gave up.
HISTORY
You say you don’t like history
because there’s never anything about people like us.
In Mr. Claus’s Senior Honors US History class, ...