walking home opposite a beautiful girl

I’m walking home, overheated,

and it’s hard to ignore the girl

on the other side of the road

waving around a dead lacrosse-stick-

-palm-frond-tribal-prodder-thing –

there are no palm trees on this road –

that says look at me to the press of traffic,

and picking up rubbish, and being pretty –

I wonder if the paper bags she carries

and deposits the rubbish into

are as full of books as mine, and if

she uses the same hair ties as I do –

I wonder how many years younger

than my little brother she must be –

I wonder if she is going on that walk

for solar energy this coming Sunday –

I feel sure for a second that she’ll switch

sides because my wonderment

has willed her to, and my haircut,

and my rolled-up left sleeve,

and the meeting of our eyes a few times,

and the likelihood that my heart

will eat itself if she doesn’t, but now the tasseled

tip of her scepter graces the close-cropped grass,

rakes gum nuts that bobble in its dusty wake,

and she is as raucously disinterested in me

as the fucking gorgeous parrots in the brambles –

and I don’t cry then because my screwtight

solitude springs leaks when any girl

prompts my mind to ask ill-tempered questions

of them, or compare them to birds, or often

incorporeal matter, mist, even though it’s true –

no – I cry because she drops her bag and it spills

and inside there is only more rubbish.