I’ll Be Better When I’m Older
BY CHELSEA CHRISTINE HILL
—Edwin McCain
For years, my brother, at the bridge,
would meet with Casey F.—who would be
perfect, he’d say, with a paper bag over her head.
Though once—bus-bound, between the rounds
of “Ride Wit Me,” the 4 PM moon suspended
ahead—he traced, in hot breath, V ♥s C
on the window. I’d glimpse their heads joined
by the thread of earphones, crowns lit
like flaxen weft. Every fall, we’d spangle ourselves
in ribbons, bells, the cheap, plastic footballs
painted gold. As if we could, then, weave
a name into our girlhood tapestries. A casting
down of fantasy. But it was nothing so mythic:
pre-formal, buzzed with the stolen hard lemonades,
the afterglow of a Friday night stadium, where boys
paint B T F O on their chests & bang the air
with their hips. Don’t tell me we belong, here,
beneath the papier-mâché pyramid turning
in the draft, in the light that lands like wreaths
at our feet. Don’t tell me we belong before
the PTA or Jesus, who, some say, rocks in the space
between stiff-armed teens, the chorus of “I’ll Be”
set loose on our lips. Tell me a story where the lovers
wake, slowly, faces gold in the soft morning light.
Where the Roman god or first-string QB steps not into
that underworld scene—where the stage goes dark &
my brother falls from view. I’ll be better when it’s through.
