Peter Douglas • Poems in Our Pockets (for Corinne)

We wore baked pumpkins,
spitted on our heads.
We felt the seeds
and lapped up their stickiness
with our nails.

The moon was slippery
and climbed like fireflies
out from between our
scummy fingers.

We drank decent, novice cocktails,
and you touched my wrist,
like a child who remembers
her mother at the last second
and runs inside to hug her before
leaving for school.

I had not known you had milk
chocolate in your chest,
but you breathed and I felt your pulse
and looked like a boy at your breasts.

No one knows this about you,
or me.