Improv 1, Week 11

Introductions
-Jillian Weise

After we're introduced ourselves
with gin and tonic and jazz,
a woman asks to read our palms.
We decide that we are worth
at least one night together/

In the bed without sheets,
the room with blank walls
and cobwebbed windows, a green
light bulb shines, reminds you
of the ocean.

You tell me about your house
catching fire, your parents dying
while you gambled in Las Vegas.
I tell you about airport alarms set off
by metal rods in my back.

You trace the scar along me spine
and I imagine what it must feel like.
We determine the arrangement of parts,
hip bones and shoulders, your Adam's
apple to my nose.

We decide all of this without speaking.

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We meet like two anatomy charts
rubbing together, wedged between
the introduction is our thighs.
In the bed of my backseat we stumble
over buttons and regrets of current
location. Packed in the far corner

of the church lot, the street lamp
fails to reach us in our mission.
There must be a punishment for this—
for this moment when you watch me
tug out my tampon and then I smile

at your eyes as they watch my hands.
I’m convinced this moment will be
goose-fleshed, robbed of cinematography,
but this is better than any movie.
We ration our limbs, verb each other,

hope the cops don’t cruise by.
You crack the window to let the night
in and cover us like sheets. This all reminds
me of where we are not. That somewhere
outside the car, next to a puddle, is my tampon.

So this is love, this is how we meet.