Jeanmarie Marchese | + Follow Poet |
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North Carolina and the Moment In Which People Kiss.

I sang the words of

Joni
Mitchell

and pretended to own barstools as my sweaters lost color, I scribbled words on napkins and
slid drinks underneath them, I pretended to be...

him.


“Buy me something, something I can wear around my neck and place pictures in, something
that sparkles, something.....pretty,” I asked him.

He shook his head because he knew about my tendencies to break chains when I felt too
locked up, he knew the way I loved to run.

I stopped for a second and paused the moment we were supposed to kiss in, I placed my head
on his lap and told him of North Carolina~

only because I loved the words.

I stopped there, sometimes, on the borders that separate Virginia, I've thrown my life on
hotel room floors, losing it under the bed just so I could sleep, I've walked out and left
myself behind, and I've wondered, those times, about the meaning of forever.


We met, he and I, you know, in a hotel, in a room where the key unlocked me, and I had
thrown myself to the floor with a black skirt and a pair of fishnets and 

h i d

under the bed while he smiled...

I kept my eyes open, on top of bedspreads and headboards and I kept thinking that we'd

stayed too long
that
we
stayed past the moment where people kiss...

and I wondered, that time, if that moment meant forever, but I forgot to ask and was too
frightened to hear the answer.


Years later, we slept, we dreamed in North Carolina, after I sang him

Joni Mitchell

after he gave me something pretty,
he gave me his name
to dangle
around
my
neck.

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