Tuscaloosa Missed Connection: bullseye – Target – m4w – 22

On a day when everyone here is here to buy everything, you did not come here to buy anything. The daughters trying to distance themselves from their mothers, the mothers trying to lock arms with their daughters: simi- lar white bags, similar color schemes. Today has nothing to do with want: today has everything to do with need: a need for pillowcases, a folder, a place to hang wet towels—wet clothes from scaling a locked fence to swim after too much liquor. I still have a scar from that fence: red lines that curl like eyelashes, a semi-circle on the wrist. I held my arm underwater to stop the bleeding, to hope that the chemicals would form a wall around the water and myself. I would pull myself up from the edge of the pool and my arm would be smooth, white. Forgive me for talking about scars. Where I am from you cannot walk in the tall grass: a hard tick will latch onto your leg. It will stay there until filled with your blood; it will fall, happy and fat. Your heartbeat will change. You will see things that are not there. On the back of my leg, concentric circles: red where there should be white, white where there should be red. Then, nothing. No object within an object: for now. You, who did not come here to buy anything, I have seen you before. Let me see your wrist, let me see where the wire cut you.