hero-ika mad, her name was something foreign, she had
pre-raphaelite posters on the wall, new yorker
tote bag tucked like a third arm
under the
anthropologie coat.
can’t you imagine fucking — her? neither can I, in this
culture, we don’t fuck anymore / at all; everything is online, everything is
ironic. and the warm air went softly down around me
the way i felt when i was twelve and straddled the porch with my
step-brother, my father’s dream-military-son, only he was
also twelve and lonely; suburbia went down hard
around us like a love song, like a punk rock
sylvia-plath-electrocuted-in-her-basement
kind of love song. we were twelve, we had one shared
memory where we almost killed my father’s
yapping stupid dog. my mattress was dragged out of my room
and put in the living room as punishment
for some protest, for looking like
my mother; i remember my step-brother’s shut-off
eyes the night we left, when the police came; later he would
appropriate my father into facebook photos,
military graduation, future fascists — I don’t
mean that,
usually men in military uniform arouse me, blow my sad
virgin heart to the moon. I am being cruel, ironic,
kind-of-euphoric-sad.
can you imagine fucking her? yeah, no, I mean —
her reading-list was all Camus, her wardrobe was
entirely tik-tok / artificial 90s — like those made-up
internet pop-punk songs with the trash lyrics, she has a
claw-clip in her hair like it is
still two months ago, her name is
hero-ika, something aesthetic and longing and
false.
the last pavilion 