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.