Mark Twain Headache
Tom
Brown-haired and
dangerous with simplicity,
you slid unnoticed into my passenger seat—
that first-time love.
Fifteen to my seventeen,
that love slowly calloused
forming beautifully over
games of tic tac toe on napkin corners
and the way you looked at me when I rolled
past stop signs.
There was never enough of you,
of your hands and your smell and the
notch behind your jaw
and we would whisper between bra hooks
that your mom would not be home until
dinner.
This must have been the Greatest Love
the World had ever known,
yet it fell.
You walked away, left me crying on
bathroom tiles despite the
fights we never had and the
promises we swear we meant.
Swapped lost virginities at the train station,
and no matter how many times I go back,
I still can’t find mine.
Sawyer
You were a mistake that I fell in love
with making,
crafting it out of your dried oil paints and
scraps of my summer poetry and
the John Lennon song—
you know which one.
Always scribbling about
strangers’ faces or Kerouac
and leaping across the world on a whim,
you were a flight risk that I would have bet
every failed lemonade stand quarter on.
There was just something
about the life we built
on a moonphased dreamscape
of lavender oil and beaded bracelets—
that cosmic connection.
When you broke me like it was nothing,
trading me for Freedom or
Some Open Space or
maybe just bullshit,
I felt hollowed inside
scooped out raw
because while I hate being wrong,
you know it,
I would choose being wrong
every time
if it meant that I didn’t have to be
right about you.
Riley is a third year student at DePaul, majoring in English-Creative Writing and minoring in both Professional Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies. At DePaul, Riley works at the University Center for Writing-based Learning, is on staff for the Crook & Folly literary magazine, and attends weekly meetings for Writers Guild. Outside of school, Riley has been working as an intern at Open Books for the past academic year, and she works as a stylist at Free People. In her spare time, Riley enjoys reading, listening to David Bowie, doing yoga, and thrift and vintage shopping.