carnival love music
she was like a lost love of Charlie Brown
strolling across the campus village green
in her long coat of murals with eyebrows fluctuating
laughing at the thin air and causing people
to wonder if she was as dark and sharp as
her eyes amplified behind coffeehouse poetry
glasses
we met at the plastic toy farm exhibit in my white
barren room after my sisters and I finished off a bottle of
rum to reveal a bikini clad Puerto Rican, who we cast
in the farm scene as the town drunkard
the strange girl meticulously arranged the animal
scene and with such majesty and won the weekly contest
and I stole her pom-pom winter hat in lieu of the entry fee
the naysayers forbade me to see her again, but I climbed into her room
lantern boxes and pictures of all of her favorite presidents and the
rare Bowie record playing in the background as she jumped on a
trampoline.
the room became a museum of stolen toys, a bonus she gave to herself for breaking
into retail
and I took a full breath for the first time.
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