Tupelo

I wanna go to Tupelo with you.
I don’t care that I’ve never seen that place outside of a picture,
because I think that town would hold us 
keeping us cool, keeping our skin warm because we’re tasty. 

I want to sleep in a hotel room where everything is velvet and green. 
Where the end of the toilet paper roll 
is dog-eared like a Jacqueline Susann novel. 
I want to make verbs with you. 
I want my thighs to stick to the seat. 
want to shave my legs in a parking lot 
with a razor from a pack of six. 
The pack has to last us three weeks. 

I want to eat warmish macaroni at an Esso station 
in a town between others with names. 
I want to sing until my voice sounds like yours 
and yours like mine. I want to almost leave you one night 
in a dead mall over something tiny that explodes. 
I want to love Elvis with you without irony. 

I want to take care of all that business I built up without you 
on my own. I want to cry lost time into every stitch 
of the pillow until all those stitches loosen into notes. 
I want to take a bath of notes. I want to loofah my legs with B-flats 
and slide As down my stomach to a place 
that in teen movies is secret and sacred. 

But I want you to know me entirely. I want you to record music
     on my skin. 
I want to play your eyelashes, your toes, 
your fingernails, the hoarseness of your voice. 
I want us to be louder than the radio.

—LAUREN KIRSHNER

(Originally published, Christmas, 2011.)