knowing the good of sunstreaked hair teased into waves, eyes shadowed shimmery up to the brows, his hands all over your face, your tits, the two of you dug into a rut in the night-cold sand in the cave below the boardwalk well after the tourists leave for their hotels, well after the boardwalk shuts down for the night, and the seagulls picking at paper and bottle caps above your heads, and the waves far out and crashing in a way that makes you think of a million dishes crashing to a kitchen floor, and the trashpicker who pokes at trash with a stick and sings in the mornings when the beach is empty, and the sand on your boy, on his suntanned skin, and that coconut smell, that dirt sweat smell that makes you think, for a second, that your life is a life,
a yellow silk nightgown hanging on a hook on the back of the washroom door, your father's girlfriend's nightgown you've never seen her wear but have looked at on the hook in the washroom on nights you're getting ready to meet the kids on the boardwalk, making your face shimmer silver above the eyes, blue below, red on the lips, the ruffles around the neck of the nightgown like daisy petals on overgrown daisies,
knowing you're hot as any local girl, squeezing juice on your head to lighten your hair, untying your top to tan your back, always shoeless because who the fuck cares about splinters from the boardwalk, and who the fuck cares about cigarette butts pressed to your feet or the heat of the sand if you walk on the sand,
dynamite making his dick hard like that, making it push beneath his pants pocket like you have some magic force that can turn things to stone just by hula-shaking nights with the local girls, just by smoking on the boardwalk, pushing your smoke out in the pucker you practice in the washroom mirror, a pucker learned from TV nurses and waitresses and girl cops dressed in tight tan pants, and those TV teachers, their walk to the chalkboard, their pants creeping up their cracks, your father going from his place on his chair back home, one hand tucked beneath his waistband, Will you look at that, and, Do you think she's a sexpot, so you'll go, No, so he'll laugh at you, going, Better than you, going, She's a peach, and, Your face could freeze time,
mouthing the words orange and juice, the boys all going, Come here with that, the boys all going, Come here C. S. L., for cock sucking lips, going, Bring that pussy over here,
your father, your fat uncle drinking beers on the sun porch, your uncle going, Where's the little girl, your father going, She's in the john, going, She's in a mood, how he does about the girlfriend when she swats him away with the back of her hand when you're caught watching touching when you shouldn't be watching, when she's a soft peach getting softer in his paws and she ducks out from his grip, your father going, What, the girlfriend going, Not now, your father going, You're in a mood,
never knowing how to talk to boys, never knowing how to talk to grown-ups, not wanting to talk to your father's girlfriends at the beach, every summer a new bleach-blonde with toothpick legs and pointed tits and a boardwalk night shift, funnel cake maker, ride operator, souvenir seller, never able to order your own food in the boardwalk diners, the grown-ups going to the sunburned waiters, She'll have fried eggs, She'll have buttered toast, She'll have grape jelly, burnt bacon, because they know what you need, they know how you like it, and you never speak up when you should be speaking, thinking what if you fuck up and they laugh at you in front of a waiter and what if he's hot and you cry at the table and they laugh even harder and it never ends,
dynamite getting yourself off face down in the sand by rolling slightly against the sand, by pressing slightly, thinking thoughts of your boy behind the House of Mirrors, thinking of him and you below the boardwalk making out hard in the night-cold sand, your boy's hands squeezing your ass, your tits, your boy's hands squeezing your father's girlfriend's tits, your father squeezing the girlfriend's tits, your father's paws going down her pants, the girlfriend undoing your father's buckle, your boy,
your father and your fat uncle smoking on the sun porch, your father's girlfriend working night shift on the boardwalk, and you in the washroom putting on the girlfriend's makeup, more than your usual, made up like a sexpot like the TV sexpots, teasing your hair into something big, trying on the nightgown to see if it fits, finding it fits a bit large in places, long in others, but overall close, swiveling your hips in the girlfriend's nightgown in the washroom mirror in the figure eight you learned from TV when your father was sleeping in his chair in the room back home and the show switched to something, the news, then something, some late night show and instructions on how to hula dance, the host of the show in some awkward swivel, painful to watch, and the audience laughing and clapping as you tried out the swivel in front of the TV until your father waked in a snap with a sudden, Don't, and went back to sleep,
your father and your fat ugly uncle looking as you slowly walk across the sun porch, the sun porch already a haze of smoke, as you sit on a chair in the girlfriend's nightgown, as you spread your legs some then snap them shut before anyone sees, crossing your legs at the ankles and going, What,
knowing the good of eyes like smoke, like smoldering ash, the brown eyes you line with blue, the brown hair you streak with lemon juice, your white bra padded enough to have something soft and big to press into your boy's chest, going, Look but don't touch, behind the House of Mirrors, going, Glad you thought about it though, Glad you noticed, Thanks for looking, Look again sometime, walking past with the girls and laughing by the Flying Bobs, laughing when the boys call you C. S. L., when they call you cocktease,
appearing behind the House of Mirrors the first night at the beach after your father goes, Don't get back too late, and appearing, shoeless, in from the city, What's your name, Susan, Where you from, The city, What city, Baltimore, the local kids knowing you're hard as coconut, hard as stone, this tourist from the city who knows this beach is some stupid crazy land of spinning kites and every damn ride on the boardwalk spinning, the Himalayan, the Flying Bobs, songs playing up so loud on those rides every tourist in every hotel can hear them playing nights, the local boys going, Sweet Susie Q, the local girls going, Don't listen to them, the man at the Flying Bobs going, Do you want to go faster, the kids on the ride going, Yes, the songs so loud they get stuck in your head the way pictures get stuck in your head,
someone on the sun porch seeing, your fat uncle seeing, a quick glimpse of something, you can tell, as he raises his eyebrows and looks at your father,
wanting to be invisible from some magic force that can turn you to cloud when you have to turn to cloud so your father can't see you come in at sunrise, so the girlfriend can't see you with the kids on the boardwalk, so she can't see you picking at your salad at the table and go, Eat your salad, pretending she's a grown-up when she's closer to your age than to your father's, a local your father met on the beach, her top untied to tan her back,
going, Give me a smoke, to some local girl who smells like sweat, who wears her hair the way you wear yours, long, streaked, who dresses how you dress, Give me a smoke, before walking past your boy, your boy going, Come here Susie Q, Where you going Susie Q, Where you going sexy girl, and you going, I don't know where I'm going, and, Why should I, making the local girls laugh,