Amy

I was seventeen
and she was pretty when I met her
with soft lips hiding bad teeth
me all lumpish in my great black coat
smiling back in my smeared black eyeliner
and industrial leather boots
falling in love with her
behind the ice cream counter

her parents practically adopted me
always trying to fill me with food
when I preferred to starve
her dad never without a far out story
and a big laugh
her mom endlessly patient smiling quietly

Amy and I held hands under the table
and soon enough we were sharing boys
and friends
and cigarettes
and badly rolled joints
and angsty teenage poetry

I loved her
but I don't think she loved me that way
as a parade of violent men
entered her life
in the years that I knew her
plucking little bits of her all purple inside and out
as her sickness grew out of control

I never knew what was wrong with her
always sick
sick in love with destructive men
who didn't love her back

sick with a broken body
and a head full of fractured glass
years later on my doorstep
with scrambled memories from electroshock treatments
and even more years later a crack habit
that broke my heart in half when I had to turn her away

I think about the nights when we were young
drunk on tequila
and singing late into the night at the top of the stairs
running through the dark park
and down the highway 
in that tiny town
where there really was nothing to do
with our silly friends
high as kites on cheap sticky weed
stopping in the playground
to swing as high as we could
pumping our legs towards heaven
I think of the boy I shouldn't have drunkenly fucked
her aching love
and the cruelty she found to level at me
which I probably deserved
but mostly I think of my head in her lap
the music we couldn't stop listening to
the way we believed in magic
smearing charcoal across big swaths of paper
endlessly talking night after night
her crooked smile peering down at me
and the secrets we shared

she's always there
the first girl I loved
Amy with her crooked teeth
and lost little heart
most days I'm somebody else now
but I'll never forget her hand in mine
as we disappeared into the trees
and whispered to each other
'maybe we'll just never go back again'