I am a child in the lunchroom
which is the sometimes gym
singing my known truths: I love milk
to which Tanya says If you love it so
much why don’t you marry it?
And that’s a fair point, Tanya.
Why don’t I marry this milk, why
don’t I plan an elaborate ceremony,
choose colors, invite milk’s family
and milk’s college friends to stay near,
but not with, us? Why don’t I start
picking the poems now to be read
as we wed somewhere necessarily
refrigerated? Just like a child
to think it’s so easy—that love
is a one-way act or a matter
of decision. We can’t love
what we love into loving
us. Tanya, if I could
why would I waste my time
with milk, or with you, you
whom I decidedly do not love?
I’d be out charming
my indifferent grandmothers
into expressions of genuine affection
and jewelry. I’d be deepening
a correspondence with television
and movie star Michael J. Fox
who I imagine chastely kissing
with my full and future lips,
making the sounds
I’ve seen on the screen.
Tanya, this is the smallest torture
you’ll think up for me, perfected
until junior high starts and I
am in honors classes and you
are not—forgive me this, my own
small wounding, but I am
storing these cruelties inside me
like a library dedicated
to one kind of war. I am becoming
a woman who’ll do almost anything
to be wanted. Why don’t I marry
the milk, Tanya? Ask the milk
what there is in me to love.
