Another Small Gathering

Someone had laced the pot,

my date shape-shifting 

in the car’s plush seat. 

I rolled with it, his tongue, 

not sexy or soft, but possibly 

earnest. I must have bit him 

on purpose to regain my breath, 

redirect him away from my throat. 

Get it on, bang a gong, get it on,

his favorite song on the mixtape.

I was a liar, called my parents 

hours later from a distant Finger Lake 

to say I was sleeping at Suzanne’s. 

Is a hydra like the zebra mussel 

taking hold here, forever altering 

the ecology of Keuka and me, half-dressed 

in his younger sister’s top bunk, 

my bony hips against his, 

the popcorn ceiling scraping my back 

each time I was flipped over. 

I’d foreseen this happening 

the second we left the gymnasium 

with its stupid decorations. 

Through the bay window of a child’s room,

the black water licked the dock,

the huge lake a dream

into which I threw my still boyish body.

He wasn’t aware of me, 

nor I of him. How inelegant and sad 

our untangling was, how we’d misremember it.