8 years later and the pizza boy chronicles 

We pizza when I was twelve.
This was when I had one brother 
and shaved my leg hair with my father's
used razors-- When my mushroom feet
rejected socks and when I didn't know
there were nicknames for vaginas.
I sat on the porch-- legs open in a pleated 
black and white skirt with the telephone
in my hand. The pizza place knew
our address by my father's voice.
so it was surprising that the pizza
never arrived. I called back to the
hollow hum of an empty phone only moaning
about the distance between so many people.
My brother and I ate porch potato rolls
with peanut butter and I snacked on
the bag of grapes-- fed myself like
the dirty mushroom-foot goddess I was
and wondered where the pizza boy went.

--

1. 
434 Noble Street 
Kutztown PA, and I'd been there to deliver
pizza before.
I drive a 1996 dusty-bruised Oldsmobile.
They have a chubby girl with
black curly hair and a boy who thinks he
is as small as an apricot. The father
wipes paint on his shirt.
Somewhere between the fire station
and the mouth of the corn fields
I missed their green front door
and the car kept going.

2. 
I always thought about them too much--
I know it's just pizza, but I wondered
about them. 
Every now and again they ordered
Italian hoagies and the girl 
got her's with mayo--she was sometimes
on the porch drawing pictures 
of their neighbor's tree at different 
angles. I wondered if she was
looking for something with the pencil--
the boy arranged army men
in rows set for a war never intended
to begin. She wore
pleated skirts like pants.

3. 
I passed their front door again
and again on Fridays--
banged hard on the glass of the 
car window. I haven't left yet--
the vessel seems set for some 
predetermined destination-- I only wish
I could stop passing their house it
makes me feel guilty-- I wonder if they were
hungry or if they shared fruit on a porch
three years ago. I wonder if they
still get pepperoni or if the 
uncle orders pineapple.

4.
The car stopped this year.
Parked itself in the middle of 
a corn field-- only this corn field
wasn't in Kutztown. I couldn't see
the bald heads of the silos or the
industrial city of the battery factory
always lit up and dangling
in the night sky like Christmas.
The pizza was still warm but I wasn't hungry.
I wondered if the family ever got a dog
or if they still ate pizza
or if the mother worked late
or if they ate pizza at the beach.
I sat on the hood of the car-- warm
pizza boxes on my lap and counted
the stars-- there were exactly
434 every night.

5.
The car started with me on the hood.
I clutched the pizzas tight and flung them inside
the open front windows of the car--
the hull was full of 
lightning bugs and I shooed them away
to reclaim a seat. I sat shot gun.
I wasn't going to pretend to drive
anymore. The lightning bugs kept
trying to carry the pizzas away.
I waved my hands wild as if they were mosquitoes--
The pizzas were still warm through the box.
We passed the house again.
There was a wreath on the green front
door and the house's eyes were wobbly
like candles.The girl was shaving her
head in a mirror and the boy
washed his hands in the sink.

6.
This year I only passed drawings of
the neighbor's tree. I never noticed how
thin it was and how much like a girl's body.
I have grown accustomed to the warmth of
pizza boxes on my lap and the way the
headlights have began to flicker as they
plow through another night in the
mazes of cornfields bleeding into the
celestial skirt hem all around.

7.
I wanted to open the box very badly
today. I'm guilty enough to be seven years
late-- let alone to peek at
their food. I wonder if they'll hug me
when they see me-- bare feet on a porch--
I bet they will have forgotten about the
pizza. I would. I mean I would have forgotten
too if this weren't the only thing I could think 
about. The headlights went out last night.
It makes me think that I might be close to getting
there. Passing the house doesn't mean anything--
but I think I'm getting closer.
Next week will be eight years on Friday.

8.
The car stopped at the end of the driveway
and I couldn't help but look before I handed it
over. I felt something for the pizza. I felt
like it was my friend and at the same time
like the house was my house
and the girl my daughter and my sister.
The father-- my father-- my mother
drove a blue station wagon full
of discarded Wendies bags--
and my son and apricot brother
who must have been as round as a peach--
I had to look. I knew it was empty.
I had always known it was empty.
I left it on the door step.
I kicked off my shoes and sat on their 
sunken skeleton of a couch.
No one was home and it was Friday.

--

And sometimes on Fridays
I still find empty pizza boxes
washed ashore
on the back step of my dorm room.
For some reason they're still warm.
I collected them in piles under my bed
when everything is cold in November.
I think about the girl body 
of my neighbor's tree
I think about the paint stains 
on my father's shirts.
I think about folding pizza
and grape goddesses with porch feet.