non-codes for where

there's a firefly preaching and searching up against my window
the fire detector says okay and watches
my butt is smooth
over the air mattress that feels like water where it ends at my ankles.
Just as I have grown up
I have grown up! I have not grown up. I don't listen unless it sounds like a foreign language,
or if I want to kiss it.

The warning neighbor with the broken lamp of four fruit-colored heads dangling by popscicle wires
read my palms and said he had never been so off before
but how can you be a libra? but your career line is so broken; but your lines are still forming
in one year, they will look completely different - even the left hand of your birth destiny!
I paced because I wanted his desk for seventy dollars
I paced because I saw the porn on his laptop, and told him it was okay
I paced because his lamp was broken, and because he was fat.
"Be careful around here," the warning neighbor said, because he is leaving: "there is a secret knock, for neighbors here."
Seven bits, the smoke and the half pipe.

The driver from Sudan has a friend who was shot by drug criminals in Durham.
The singer from Miami knew it was Leonard Cohen and not Songs by Ohia
The singer with the long mustache sang, just right, more than full-souled in the Carolina corner
The man who made my pita said AIDS must be bad in Thailand
"I'm not having sex there, ever."
The man who sells plants at Home Depot wrapped carts of deck supplies in enormous sheets of plastic wrap as the store closed
as I picked off the dead leaves from my new baby

Over cold bruchetta bearing goat cheese from a plastic tub, and water smoothies,
the wind knocked over a potted tree, but the pot did not crack
the waitor said duke students are not nice and he offered me a job.

Ally was in Monaco, Andy was in China, Alyssa was in Costa Rica, Annie was in Austria, Chris was in Russia, Carson was in Cambodia, Jon was in Brazil, Collin was in Spain, Will was in the Czech Republic, Katie was in India, Joan was in Italy, Eric was in Korea.

I was in heat, in need of little, in Panama, insecure, inside myself, in denial, in a while, inland, before the islands, when I sailed away sailless on a motorboat to paradise. This summer I stopped biting my fingernails, plucking my eyebrows, shaving my legs, and ripping at my feet.

Both Madelines looked at me with open, painted eyes. Where do you go? They ask.
Pedro appeared for the first time from behind, not from the cigarette porch.
Nick's hair is shorter. Pedro's hair is longer. Katie's hair is shorter. My hair is longer.

I wonder how many larvaes fall asleep at five in the morning and have forgotten when they wake up.