Landscape as Summer Camp and Dream

There might have been a boy. Or maybe I was just homesick. 
I cried a lot. I wanted to go home. I wanted to jump 

into the lake and know what it is to drown. 
I wanted to go home.

I don’t remember his name, but I remember 
how dirty I felt at eleven kissing a boy 

behind the boat shack at a summer camp I didn’t want 
to attend but my mother made me and my father paid 

the tuition and there I was wasting my time and wasting
all my firsts on a boy whose name I don’t remember. 

I was eleven. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

The night of the dance he asked me to go with him. 
I thought of my brother, a few cabins down, and how hard 

he’d hit me if he knew the secrets I’d collected in the night.
In the distance, young crickets learned to play the violin. 

I learned how to break a boy’s heart.

Instead, I watched a movie about a man who became a pirate
and returned to marry his princess. She was useless, 

but that’s how we blondes are. We’re useless unless you need 
a broken heart. We’re the best at breaking. Don’t forget it.

On the last day I gave the boy my address. I told him to write me 
every day. I told him I was afraid of forgetting the color 

of his hair, the way his skin looked under shutters of moonlight, deep 
deep in the forest. I told him I was afraid of forgetting his name. He

kissed me one more time. I didn’t see him again.
My mom kissed my cheek and told me how much

she missed me. She asked me if I had fun. She didn’t mean for me to cry.
In my dreams, I’m the moon’s daughter and she sends me to summer camp 

because it’s what I wanted. In these dreams, I still meet the same boy
and he still loves me. When he asks me to dance, I can say yes 

because I was born a girl. I was born to love him and my brother 
approves. I don’t know what a bruise looks like. I’ve never had 

a black eye. I am the lake. I am the girl deep inside the lake, reflecting 
the visage of a silver mother. I am drowning. All that kissing and I never learned 

how to float.

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