Number One

One July you created a heroine, crushed with vacuous viridity. 

Six to nine, your muffled, saccharine voice envelops me. 

Curls that are artificial, embrowned strands, weightless. 

Arresting, cat-like orbs with chocolate pupils, enswathing. 

Right hands, similar size, but your virile palm devoured mine. 

He’s a masculine boy, sculpted thighs, coltish grin.

Enter the room, adrenaline. 

Illiberal time, selfish, conceited 

Let Earth rotate as Venus does, just one week. 

Instead,  my pleas dilapidated, six days evanesce. 

Knock. Take my number now, my Instagram later. 

Extricate my grasp, ten feet higher, reticent and yellow in the school bus. 

Disappear, drive away, back down to Chicago. 

You asked, Instagram? 

On. I giggle, and we tumble, texting minute by minute, two weeks.  

Up, three hours past my bedtime.

Keep whispering, “you’re pretty”

Engulf me with my phone calls until mid-August

Protect this.

Impatient current, driftwood.

Seconds carelessly wander to hours, and hours melt into days. 

Illiberal time, selfish, conceited. 

Inconspicuous, you vanished into a memory. 

Credulous fool. I wait, I forgive, I linger

Rotting in myself, Never Had a Chance by Katherine Li

Hopeless Romantic. 

Undo me, unknot me, become unreal to me,

cruel, malign, Chicago boy.