The Middle I Worry About

I am excellent at starting.
I am excellent at ending.
It is the middle I worry about.

I was in the back of a black SUV at fifteen.
Machine guns slid
under the seats in front of us.
Palm trees swayed.
Pills jingled in a jar.

Later, I would caress rows of T-shirts,
stare at myself in a fitting-room mirror.
The vibration of food-court noodles,
pepperoni floating on fluffy breath,
greasy cheese
making me sweat.

That was teenagehood.

We drove around the Gardens Mall.
 I can never remember which department store is where.
 Always the tension of shiny credit cards
 slipping across a counter,
 my mother’s heart in knots.

She knows each department well.
At services—even Yom Kippur—
I am best dressed,
except for my flat hair she doesn’t approve of.
I should spray it, tease it,
tell it to stand up straight,
act alive.

My mother beats her chest, but in denial.
She doesn’t know Hebrew.
She is doing the best she can
with eyes that see only skin.

I don’t have life
except with a babysitter—

She takes me to Bennigan’s.
I eat a taquito.
That taste is what I later feel in my heart
when someone loves me.
And so I think maybe,
when I’m on my deathbed,
I will be good at that.

You might ask why there were machine guns
in the back of an SUV
I was riding in at fifteen.

A blue-blue night.
A large white mansion on the beach.
Wind blowing over an invisible ocean.

I walked into one of the many rooms
to see two glossy bodies moving,
an exchange.

They called to me.

Instead,
I went to the kitchen
and drank a Sprite.