I wanted you to buy me the real green dress,
and I didn’t get the joke. Eight years old,
at a barbecue laughing about dijon ketchup
—I’m older now. Believe me, I’m grown.
I wonder if you still drive downtown,
passing the place where you used to live,
thinking about what to think about.
I’ve had others. I could be what’s been done,
I could be your Yoko—I hated you on MTV—Ono.
I worry about other rock stars also. Steve?
Steve, did you look out that window and see
the weird shapes in the faces? Every eyebrow
a perverted checkmark? I bet. I did too.
You said you’d buy me a monkey.
I haven’t always wanted a monkey,
at least not until you brought it up.
Believe me. I know. Believe me,
I broke into our old apartment.
They have torn the phones out of every
apartment. This is decades after the song.
This is post post-divorce cocaine bender,
and then there is still the somewhere,
someday, of you sitting in a lawn chair,
drinking an unnecessary—an ideation
building castles in the sand. You there, Steve?
I never laughed at you. I just lusted after green
dresses. Thought about parking my heart next
to the Big Happy. The summer you dripped
from my air conditioner and the men flipped
burgers in hawaiian shirts. I am so grateful.
