Hot-pink summers provide
Tan-crisp faces
Pockets scratchy with sand
and heart-biting, igniting images
of boys in bookstores, in buses
Stooped
over novels with jagged names

These darlings invite
lavender-pink daydreams
to feed the fat vacancies.
We imagine pathsm(cr)ashing
Love-sparks will zip free
So we, too, can leap

Then--
The heart-hack of beautiful boys
Who feign interest just to prove they can
Seduce us into a face-slam
With a pole,
Or an ouch- slip into a
ditch.

While rubbing raw bruises
And shrugging off wormy
dirt clods,
We will glance at them--strong--a phoenix
born from the ashes of heart-burn

And think:
Did the lumps in our throats betray our careless expressions?