You are 8 and The Little Mermaid is your new favorite movie. You will never be Ariel
but you know all about trading a voice and signing yourself over. You get Matt
in the red Corvette. 4,3,2,1. Your body pressed between a girl’s legs, slide and pretend
it’s your wedding day. You say you will have a son and name him Sebastian.

Your mother’s in the dark, a constant drive-through and tossed dinner, her stress greasing
the back seat, pink meat.     Mansion. Apartment. Shack. House.     Your son’s in the dark
pointing at homes he’ll buy you, singing a song      you wish for celebration. In 1990, life
unfolded from paper. Now a 1 in 4 chance is well above the odds. Still you promise him

a pool. Early on you skimmed warnings, said sorry to a man who could be rape and 20
years later finally apologized to yourself.  You’re 41 and some of you is better than ever
possible, some you swore you’d never be. The rest of you sits like fat wedges in a chart
named only by color, but green is you  red is too, little round weird girl, standing under

museum lights, watching a friend cry as she’s named your partner, watching the right
girls console, say it’s ok, “Dani isn’t so bad,” offering their Skittles, slap bracelets, a way
she can make it through the day    and life is spent wondering if you’re really that
bad. No one is ever prepared to be that bad       a childhood’s future, stories lived with

stories lived without, a low word count. A doubled prescription. 18, 19 snorted through
hundreds, lines lost to no pen     left with half of what could’ve been, a rich youth
numbing teeth. You tell your ex-wife you can’t fill the gas tank, admit ADHD, love
addiction, what you can’t afford. Today, you say, it’s me    for better or worse, without you:

there’s still no book, just best of intentions and 24 years in; now your writing is anyone’s
guess, loves boundless and unsettled, set to sides. Now there’s finding sides, even one more
underneath. Students scale desks and applaud, your name    the tendered fame— oh, captain,
my captain          you no longer need everyone to love you, just some to simply

understand. One day you’ll be hitched to gratitude, an inch of moments, long drives to
collect the teenagers inside you still waiting for a ride home. You might never reconcile 
harmony of gain plus loss, pain trumpeting over joy. You might learn surrender and still stack
your chips in 4 equal lines, keep the truths from towering over    because the lie is some day

our hunger feasts. And we’re left living, like stepping out of matinees, blinking disbelief
until we adjust back to the light, to time, that folded flap between what you wanted
then calling what you got. Another night, he’s in the dark and so are you, breathing in
the him you’ll never know.  He’s the story’s shape, fingers cast wide, like he will always

grab whole. You have a son named Sebastian.