born to struggle, born to love

She'd been up all night
in and out
of fretful sleep,
dreaming of the tarantula she'd seen at the company ball game.

The couple kept it in a cage, right behind their cooler.
They'd offered her a soda, dark and sticky sweet,
so, when it came time to pet the creature,
she'd had an excuse--her hands were dirty.

She sat and plucked dandelions, ripping them to shreds,
trying "Love me, love me not."

The game went on and the game ended.

Somehow she ended up on the sofa, deep burnt orange corduroy.
Everyone else was either asleep or out drinking,
getting stoned in the late summer night
so she sat with the remote in hand and some cookies and milk on the coffee table.

The Oreos were sodden and dripping before she ate them.
She spent all of Savannah Smiles sucking chocolate mush off her gums.
No one cared if she brushed her teeth.

Her hands worried the burn hole in the sofa.

She thought about all sorts of things,
writing letters to God,
plucking three leaf clovers in the front yard,
wishing on stars but not knowing if they were actually planets,
or maybe even other distant universes,
and maybe in one of those far away, unknown universes, on one of its planets,
there'd be someone just like her.

Except it was a boy,
feral,
living in a tree house,
in a land with no TV,
where it never got too hot or too cold
but where'd there be a great thunderstorm once in a while,
so they could huddle in the treehouse,
rain beating on the roof,
as they listened to Coast to Coast on their portable radio,

waiting for the sunrise together.