she pulled me into the laundry room,
mascara spilling down her graduation dress.
Her High School sweetheart — a lover
of Pearl Jam, hockey and monogamy — clueless
on the other side of the door.
I asked why she waited until graduation
to become a lesbian when we spent the past four years
at a liberal arts college known for its Kombucha and girls
braiding each other’s armpit hair on the Ultimate Frisbee Quad.
We’d done everything together: dyed our hair the same
shade of Manic Panic. Guarded the door for each other while touching
strange men in bar bathrooms. Told the same tequila secrets
to the same plastic wastebaskets. Shared a twin bed.
We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry — but I held her
the way I always held her.
How could we not have known?
I slid down the snowy hill on a dining hall lunch tray
only after she braved it. She chewed the mushroom stem
only after I swallowed mine.
We unlocked each other
like middle school diaries,
and so I called the girl
whose green eyes followed me across campus
for seven semesters and say Take me
somewhere
and in the garden, she kissed me
so soft, I grew
a new eyelash.
