Day Glo Girl, 1983
She was in 8th grade, wore pegged
Guess jeans, a hot pink sweatshirt,
earrings like vanilla bon-bons,
it was Spring, & this was her first time
riding home with us. A girl
in my neighborhood was her friend
(there was a party tonight,
I overheard; beer would be there).
She was grand as a Texas river—a postcard
of a Texas river—& I, no fey pop star
Brit, wore a green Local Motion T-Shirt
& green Levi’s cords, blending into school
bus seats, dark green & vinyl. Oingo Boingo
were my anthem bearers ("I’m on the outside")
but it was hard not to think that such fortune
on my route was mine. Look my way!
Look at me! Her gaze from the back seat,
where all others’ attention had been drawn,
swept over my head, but in the reels of my mind,
my invisibility was charm: At the year-end dance
I would sweep across the gym floor,
peel myself from the gray darkness, step
into a beam of light, be recognized
as from a dream—& with the Thompson Twins
singing "Hold Me Now"—
you know the movies I mean.
But 7th graders could not attend
the dance. I would not attend. Monday,
on the bus, the party was discussed
and beer, apparently, had been had.
Come summer I would turn 13, & a year
later (that would be 1984), when I
emerged from the jr. high bus
onto the high school campus—
the only high school in town—
she had disappeared.