I was still a girl when I realized
that if there was a woman inside me somewhere,
she has one hand around her neck
already old enough to know better,
another halfway to her mouth,
already learning how to hold her tongue.

It took me too many years to love
all the dragon women living in my bones.
How often was I told my voice
would never amount to much
if it kept kissing the tongue of a different country, even if
it licked all the backbone I admire in my mother
straight?

1.

The first time my mother tried to tell me she loved me
she had said too many things
neither of us could forgive.
It was an attempt at an apology,
but it sounded so angry and unwilling -
there was too much teeth
for me to even think it could be love. 

2.

In my family, no one says “I love you”
to indicate loving. Instead we say,
“I’m thinking of you,”
“Study well,” and
“See you soon.” I realize
how cold, how clumsy it must sound in English,
how much the mouth has to move,
and, even after it all, how unsatisfying. 

3.

The first time, I had to ask if he loved me,
and I savored it on my tongue like a piece of sugar,
relishing the taste of the words.
How easy it must have been to say,
and how easily it went down.
Since then, I have taken to asking
if he thinks of me, and when, and
if he wants to see me and, if so, how much.
I realize how clumsy that must sound,
how it must sound as if
I am asking for too much too often,
but loving my mother has taught me
always to ask for more.

I know now how young I was then.
So much girl and not enough woman,
you must have realized you
were the first man to ever call me beautiful.
You empty-fisted, sharp-toothed
lion of a poet.
Can you really blame me
for taking your beautiful
and running with it?

I have never met a woman
more prone to enjoying small things
than you.
Your frankenstein enjoyment of the obscure,
the precious, and the sentimental makes me think -
God, your childhood must have been glorious.

I’m thinking gardens and forehead kisses
and the kind of air you can only find in upstate New York,
and sisters, of course - sisters
upon sisters upon sisters.
And people wonder
how you grew up so well. 

My mother takes out the photographs every time I am home -
look, she says. Just look. You are old enough, you are pretty still,
just look. Hopeful but desperate, my mother the divorcée knows better
than to talk to me about love. But good matches, she knows.
Handsome boys, Ivy League credentials, stability, she knows.

I once brought a boy home for Christmas. We held hands
the entire plane ride. I didn’t quite join the mile-high club,
but my hopes sure did. He plays piano,
I had told my mother over the phone.
He’s going to law school. He has wonderful eyebrows.

We spent a perfect week in New York. Though my mother
was unimpressed when she saw the pictures, I am grateful
she didn’t bring out the photographs. I’d figured it out,
I thought. I was old enough to know - the piano never lies,
after all. Nor law school. And those eyebrows!

I brought him home for two more Christmases,
but couldn’t bear to bring him home for a fourth.
I flew home by myself that winter, hands heavy and alone.
My mother, the great comfort, brings out the photographs again.
Look, she says, as gentle as she knows, look. This boy, this one here -
he has eyebrows just like that one you liked so much.

You are pretty the same way a July sunset is ‘pretty’ -
it took me years with you before I realized that you were.
We wrote each other letters for every summer we spent apart,
and I can admit now that I lied sometimes.
I’m sure you did too. We wanted the best for each other so badly
we made up the best for ourselves, too.

My hands still remember you.
You used to play cops & robbers with our fingers
and once pressed a kiss to my wrist and declared yourself caught.
We couldn’t have been more than fifteen -
I was a romantic and all I wanted was to be grown up.
I didn’t understand much, then,
and had just wanted to feel heaviness in my hands that first time.

You would need
to travel a lot for work,
you said.
I’d understood, of course -
so did I.
Send me a postcard,
I’ll do the same for you.

Prague, you forgot.
Michigan, you swore you lost.
Beijing, you left on my pillow -
unsigned and unstamped,
it barely counted.
I waited three years for a postcard,
and got too used to coming home
to my own words.

Montreal, 2011.
You sent me an email reply
thanking me for sending you
your itinerary. In your postscript,
you promised a postcard
was on its way.

On the scale of miss you to miss you,
only my phone knows how many times
it’s been picked up only for me to remember
just how much distance there is
in long-distance.

Dear old love,
thank you for being
as luminous years later
as you were
when you were a new love.

I am glad to see
that some things
don’t change.

Every ugly shirt I’ve met this summer
reminds me of you.
Sometimes I think about the curve of your back
and how it looked as you fixed my drinks.
Three parts alcohol, one part juice, two parts luck -
we always needed the luck.

I’ll make a politically incorrect mixtape
and dedicate it to your eyebrows.
It will include a David Foster Wallace namedrop
and be a summer hit with the 18 to 25 hipsters
and the 45+ critics. Your favorite blogger
will dedicate a whole Tumblr post to it;

you will know it was for you.