Letter to my Teenage Lover

Letter to my Teenage Lover

If I had the time back and we
Could do it again
I would spend with you
An entire week
Watching American Road Movies
And another Gothic Horror.

We’d walk city bridges at night
And look through illuminated windows
Blowing covers in the dark cityscape,
Making up stories of the lonely:
He, with Wheel of Fortune, a divorcee,
She, next door, a control freak who microwaves her dinners.

I’d take you to my favorite cliffside park
And we’d sit, legs dangled over,
In the dark, drinking beer
Talking bullshit
Under stars.

And we’d read I Ching
The Romantics
The Bible
And the classifieds.
You’d do the voices.
And I would act out.

I’d cast you in classic films
And learn the lines opposite
We’d watch Truffaut and Godard
And eat oysters
And take-out Chinese.

Our summer calendar would be mostly
Unmarked, and spontaneous
Except Theatre Under the Stars
And a picnic.
An Opera, we’d cut out
Like skipping school

And find a place to sit
In a parked car
Smoking cigarettes and listening
to mixtapes
And our dreams.

And so I find
What I’m saying
Is
Thanks

There are things you can teach me
About how to spend time
Even now
As I write this
Twenty years down the road
Of too busy,
And too staid.

So I’m glad
It was like that
I did right
In my youth,
That was
Adequately
Misspent
Just in time

If you find this,
Would you please remind me
We did have a date

And, if you do look me up
In a dark, light-spilled window
One night, walking by.

I’ve decided something
And that is
To come out
Of my TV-illuminated cave
If you call me with your psychic
Waves.

And I’ll walk that bridge again
And arrange a nice trade

There will be a person walking one way
While you go the other.

Don’t look her in the eye
Just take her briefcase.

And keep walking straight ahead.