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Life Science

Layla Lenhardt

If only I was older, wiser
than gapped tooth, golden haired
twenty-two, I wouldn’t have wondered,
what whiskered man is this?
His hair like a peppered moth,
he sat stubbing cigarette butts
into the ancient ruins of the bar
ash tray. There was a familiarity
in the corner creases of his brown eyes.
I could smell the paste and chemicals
of the yellow-glossed paper of
textbooks, I could feel the dull
cuts on my index finger.

Then all at once, I remembered. Him,
younger, fuller faced, unburdened by
the history of public education,
teaching life science to 7^th graders.
My memory of how he once stood
tall at the blackboard, now mocked
the curvature of his spine over his
beer glass. I made my move.

We talked about David Byrne and what
bones I’ve been digging up the past
nine years, what wood he’s been cutting.
All the whike, his tongue was a metronome counting
measures he’d take.

His garage had a tennis ball on a string,
a warning, a one-way telephone, a pendulum
swaying, magnetic compass, living on an iron mine.
We listened to the song The Weight,
we smoked, I took my inhaler. I
wanted to fill my gaps with IPAs
and I crossed my fingers that I’d stay whole.

But how could I leave? My mouth was filled
with moon stones and marbles, my chest
was filled with bees. I unfurled
unwillingly
on his corduroy couch.
Oh come on, you’re not tired.
He was a meme, he was a joke, yellowed
by the Walmart light fixture in his townhome.
He flipped me over while I swallowed the blood
from my lips. I didn’t open my mouth again,
so it wasn’t his fault.
That night I’d lost a lot
more than the button on my skirt, than that twenty
dirty dollars at the bar. But I was a shell, floating
weightless in flattery’s ocean, I didn’t realize
that gravity was the school of hard knocks I’d
attend in my nightmares for the next ten years.

Is consent just a story we tell ourselves on the drive home
with a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel? On Alvernia
Street, the oak trees held their arms above their head in surrender
as I passed. I felt them judging me as I lit a joint and drove on,
as if the past was just an etch a sketch that could be erased.

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