The game is to be tossed into leaves at the Halloween party.
a Coca-Cola bottling plant jumpsuit, a wolfman mask
You see? He is a funny monster now. It only feels like

boyfriend-girlfriend stuff.

The game is to ride on shoulders in summer,
around and around in a kidney-shaped pool,
your legs around his neck. Because you are

favored.

It feels like maybe you are a woman
in your mom’s magazine, in an ad for Tab
or diet ice cream bars,
maybe,
skinny in a bathing suit.
You are in the sun, at last. Icarus.

Months go by, and something happens.

The game is that if you don’t want to be just in the chorus
in the Christmas pageant—if you want a part, like always—
you talk to him and he talks to his wife, and you are a camel.

By then, you are out of favor
but you can still ask for things
and get them