Lindsey Lee

Bamf! Like Nightcrawler, you just appeared in my life.
Well, without the purple light and smell of brimstone.

The new girl

on the scene in my 17^th year back in the go-go 90s
and your newness had me keen. You’d left behind
a life of perhaps pristine prestige at Hamilton High,
a performing arts school where everyone left class
early to audition, and yet you locomoted back
to the motherland of surfers of a wavelorn beach,
teamster entitlements, and gangsta romanticism.

You came to Pedro like a college kid on winter break,
just visiting and knowing everything from being out
in the great wide open, away from the harbor. You
seemed like a Woman already and you made me
feel like a boy who wanted to be a man.

New Year’s Eve a year away from of a new millennium
and my folks had skipped town and I had what all
teenagers must have— a party. Do you remember
you and two other girls locking yourself in my room?
I’ve always wondered what you did in there. Not sure
that I should ever know.

You said I kept one of your poems. Here is one of mine.