Pascale Potvin

We didn’t even kiss;

I can’t tell you how I ended up on that couch,

cuddled up and holding hands with a boy named Robin.

I know I got up and out because my friend started to throw up,

and that for many months afterward, I would see him rain or shine:

in the cafeteria, or the campus library, or at the store buying

posters.

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I pretended I didn’t want him, let alone know his face,

but I was being followed by the bird, diving and plucking

at my little heart strings.

This is my first crush in years, I’d said, to the one I was really in love with—

to the boy whom I did kiss, for an hour at a time.

But now, somehow, I felt a new fate forced upon me;

I longed to reach up, to rip out God’s tongue.

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