BABY LOVE
Gregory had a mole below his left eye
and sometimes kids in our 5th grade class
would tease him, saying he had chocolate
on his face. I was the girl who knew it
was his left eye and not his right. Who listened
in secret to Oldies 100—music like Baby Love by the Supremes
and knew every Patsy Cline song by heart. Gregory
didn’t backpack pocket blades to school like Richard
or look up girls’ skirts beneath the monkey bars
the way Kenny did, whose mom let him watch
all the Late Night TV he wanted. He was nothing
like Vinny who’d steal the grape juice box
off your desk when you weren’t looking.
And he didn’t mock William, whose dad worked hard
for a gasoline company—gasoline has the word gas
in it, which all the cool kids thought
was pretty funny; really classic. Gregory had immaculate
Ticonderoga erasers and he made my knee-socks droop
and he made my weak bony ankles
weaker. At recess before summer a soft piece of sidewalk
tar was thrown at my feet and I looked up
and there he was, skipping backwards, a rocket wanting
me to chase him. Mrs. Rivers led him off to suggest
alternative ways of procuring
female attention and in those awful green uniform pants
he looked back at me and winked—which is not
something the average 5th grader does
to another 5th grader. Three weeks later his winking face was fed
into the teeth of a triple car wreck. Eleven years
and I’m still mouthing the triple syllables
of his name. Not because he needs me to
but because I have no alternative way of procuring
his attention. At school I quit talking, Colin inches
from my face taunting SAY-SOME-THING
but I didn’t, so now I will say something, I will say
that I cried at our class talent show, watching Gregory’s mom
out in the audience, shirt mis-buttoned, camera readied,
looking for him, and seeing him
nowhere. I will say that with Gregory gone there was no one
to stop the boys from snapping
Stephen’s stutter like a twig across their knees. I’ll say ours
was a misfit purity. That after art he gave me
his scissors and I swapped
him mine, both blades aimed forward, looking at each other
like we’d just done something
dangerous. Handles inked with initials
in handwriting not his, marked the way mothers mark us carefully
when we walk into the world. I’ll say that I still
have them. Gregory, ask me to name a thing
as indestructibly beautiful as you, and I cannot. Time disfigures
those who breathe and those of us who no longer can
but none of that has touched you. Not the cruelty
of children. Not the gravel and glass
that pushed their way into your green
restless legs. Not the ugliness of an ambulance
come too late. Not the small grass square
that mothers and quilts you. Not even the skid marks
below your brother’s eyes, tire treads
red across his chest. Love is nothing
if not what takes its time. It takes sweet
time and it took tar but was taken
by tar and it’s taken eleven years of not trusting
the pitch of my voice or the shamed
insufficiency of what I have
to say—that at your service I got no further
than taking a holy card from the altar boy; picture
of an angel as dark-haired as you: an angel I’d soon shred
to ribbons, my hand around those handles for the first
and only time. Gregory, think of me
in St. Joe’s parking lot in July in a sweaty cotton skirt.
Think of my confession to that angel, in his headband
of light, how much I liked
him too. Hoping you had stopped a moment
in the beatific beating of your wings; in the now-familiar strumming
of that strange, beseeching harp.
—from Rattle #42, Winter 2013
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Courtney Kampa: “I wrote ‘Baby Love’ four years ago while attending the University of Virginia.” (web)
