we're alone at last in the backseat of
the back-to-school limo your daddy
bought for you and your friends
to use tonight, but i guess teasing
you about your reliance on your
old man wasn't a good idea 'cause
you start shoutshoutshouting,
mumbling half-drunk words, and
spraying spit onto my made-up face, and
slipping your cold, fumbling
hands up my champagne-colored two
hundred-dollar dress i bought especially
for this night of drunken debauchery that
most people like to call homecoming.
your eyes are beginning to gleam in anticipation
and you say that you can't not get your way tonight
while grinning like a crazy fool who's new
status of royalty has been thrust upon him without
much thought or regard to the easily inflated egos
of much-too-good looking high school boys.
you stomp on your homecoming king
crown and sweep up its glittered particles
into a swirling storm of fuck-me beauty
(you made love to me with that crown on,
and when it toppled off your head, you
flashed a feral grin and called me bad luck).
and it's moments like these when i realize
i've never loved you and i never will
'cause all we are (and all we'll ever be)
is a drunken late night tryst in the backseat of a limo.
you may be the romantic anti-hero in my
innermost secret bedroom dream dramas,
but i know you could never handle anything
more than this touch-and-go tumble in the dark
'cause by now, you've played the part of knight-for-a-night too many times
and you've given up hope that it'll ever get any better than this.