a coin toss

(Scene opens on girl, sitting on toilet seat, holding pregnancy test with trembly hands. There is a banging on the bathroom door.)
GIRL (directed towards door): All right, okay? Don't break the door down. I just need some fucking privacy or something.
(Takes out cigarette, puts it in her mouth.)
Oh, shit. I'm not supposed to have this. (Takes cigarette, and crushing it beneath her toe on the ground, smiles grimly) Doctor's orders, I guess.
You know, me and Brian. We're not perfect, not on the best day. But earlier, everything was really fucking pretty, stumbling into the gas station and stifling laughter against our palms. Brian kept telling me to be quiet, but I'd just laugh harder, and he'd put his hand over my mouth. I'd lick it, but he wouldn't take it off. It tasted like sweat.
So we got into the gas station. We pulled pretzels of off those little hooks and stuffed them into our coat pockets, the cashier so apathetic that he just watched us take shit with a deadpan face. I got kind of freaked out, with him sitting there staring at us like a jury handing down a guilty verdict. But then Brian leaned over to me and whispered, "Extra pretzels, lady, you're eating for two now." It wasn't really funny, but I laughed so hard I fell down in the aisle right on my butt, right on a packet of pretzels. The bag popped and pretzels were everywhere and so were my legs. And the clerk just sat there and watched us, said nothing about anything. Not even when I bought a pack of cigarettes and a pregnancy test at the same time.
Maybe he knew something, like how close we both were to crying, and how really we were just laughing because neither of us knew what people are supposed to do when they find out they made something permanent like a baby together.
And then after that, we got in the car to drive back to the motel. We were still laughing, by then so hard that we were crying, and Brian with his fresh-out-of-high-school quarterback arms, quarterback ass and smile, he says:
"I'm not gonna be like my dad, right? I'll be a better dad than my dad was, right?" and neither of us are smiling anymore, so I just say, "Yeah." It got quiet in the car, really quiet. And I needed to hold on to something to make sure I could keep things together, that I wouldn't fall apart. I grabbed his hand over the seat of the car and hold it there, trying to make us a one-person instead of two people.
We passed some neighborhoods that looked like shanty towns, all put together in one night. And there was rust everywhere, little pieces of plastic in the backyards, toys that had been left out in the rain. When we passed by people's windows sometimes you could see the shadows of an argument through the blinds.
I held Brian's hand tighter.
"What do you think our chances are? Like, really?"
There was a silence and he kept his eyes on the road.
"Fifty-fifty," he said.
(There is a knock on the door, startling her out of her reverie)
GIRL: Jesus Christ, Brian, I'm going!
You know, my whole life I've been failing tests. Maybe this one will be different.

through motel curtains

my favorite daydream is a motel room--
our clothes like a second carpet
over the ugly brown wall-to-wall stuff.
you rest your head on my stomach
and we fall asleep
in the alien light
of the television.
-----------------------------
in the afternoons
we watch clouds hang lower
over backyards,
broken tricycles
and rusted basketball hoops.
on the windows the rain
turns everything to blurry suggestions.
-----------------------------
you gave me a shell and said,
"This is a promise that I'll
take you to the beach someday."
I put it in my shoebox
next to seventeen dollars
and my social security card
and tried to be realistic about it.

portrait of a lady

when I am old, I hope
I'm the most wizened
androgynous crone
on the block

shoveling my own snow
off my driveway
writing in pen with
arthritic fingers
speaking
in a loud ugly voice,
sometimes singing off-key

I will perfect my librarian glare
and never ever wear a stupid
eyeglass chain

so nobody will dare to talk about
me in the third person in front of me
or compare me with my
younger self

and I will be crowned Wisest Old Lady
in the Universe

it doesn't matter that I can't dance;
there's no talent portion for
that kind of thing

a year in review

keep holding my face in your hands
like it was something
expensive