The Maynard
Spring 2016

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Clementine

It’s only men hooked in by our angled thumbs,
the way she wears her skin like a life vest.
Between rides, we walk the shoulder
of the highway named for birds,
three days from home, our town
dissolved behind us the way candy floss
disappears on the tongue.
Leaves only its sweetness, then nothing.
In gas station bathrooms,
we wash ourselves with wet paper towels,
dispenser soap that smells like school.
She calls her father, once, from a pay phone.
Tells me later over cheap coffee
that something inside her misses his weight
in her bed at night, the one thing
she could actually count on.