A letter to Jean Louis.

DEAR Mister Paradise, I'm falling in love with
you.  For days now I have glamorized your life
of torn loafers and filthy jeans, of hair five days
unwashed and freshly bruised knuckles.  Leave
Ginsberg in the alley, leave Cassady in California,
because this time, baby, it's all about you.  Show
me the gas station you took shelter in, sit with me
in the back of a truck and sip alcohol from a paper
bag.  I can be your confidante, your companion,
your chauffeur.  I'm not the first girl to clutch
a book to her chest and swoon for the man trapped
inside its pages, but I think I could break you
out of there if you could only do the same for me.

See, I push away pasta, I catalog calories, but for
you, for you I will eat nothing but apple pie
and vanilla ice cream, stuffed in a booth at every
diner that looks exactly the same.  If the radio
works and the sky is dry, I'll glue my hands
to the wheel and my foot to the gas pedal.
Your eyelashes are heavy, your eyebrows are
slouching.  Let me take this stretch, let me take
this road.  Let me drive the getaway car.

Jack, Sal, I need you because I can't do this
by myself.  Seventeen year old bones are brittle,
break easily, and I don't carry pepper spray.  My
thumb doesn't bend back far enough, my mouth
isn't trusting enough, and besides, these organs
promise I won't make it more than two hundred
miles before they find this rag doll
discarded in the highway gutter.  But with
you, with you I will be better and better off
even though carjacking is illegal, even though
stealing food is illegal, even though hitchhiking
is illegal, even though you're too old and I'm too
young, but forget that, forget that, you haven't aged
at all.  I have grown wiser and you have stayed
precisely the same.  What's one month? What's
fifty years? You're everlasting, you're immortal, you're
never ending.  You're invincible in your cherry
convertible, slick skin and slick hair and slick
everything else, but we can run forever, who says
we can't run forever? I'm trapped on this island
and it's like you said, because there's just the Atlantic
Ocean and I can only go so far.