AMERICANS

You kissed me at the drive-in. You, all muscles and dark brooding with your angry eyebrows and your thin upper lip. You’ve got a joker grin for a smile like everything’s a game. But you’re misunderstood—even your reflection reminds you. Your dark, brooding angst looks in the mirror to see that villain smirking back. You say a demon woke you in your sleep last night.

It hovered over you like storm clouds tend to.

And you held my hand but it was cold, not warm—even in this summer heat. YOU’RE SHAKING LIKE A LEAF, you said and wrapped your golden Italian warmth around me.

You kissed me at the drive-in, all coarse and unrefined. Your rough hands in my fine blonde hair, smoothing out the crook of my arm with your sandpaper scruff. YOU’RE COLD, you say. And I blush my petal pink way, flash my shyness in a tousle of fine blonde hair. So beg your pardon, my Swiss roots are showing, all cold and refined. I’ve been American for 300 years, but the cold still lingers in my bones. And you, fresh from Naples, a golden statue of solemnity. You and your tragic ways. We’ve got mountains between us, even still.

Shelley said a monster resided there in those snow-capped Alps, a demon lurking at our borders. Maybe you caught your demon from me. We can share if you’d like. Let’s peel back layers to a time we were young and that menacing grin fit your smiling eyes. Back before your brooding and my cold set in.

You kissed me at the drive-in, but it wasn’t enough. I want your thin upper lip and that hot Italian tongue. I want your bronze colored misunderstood. I want your soul all to myself. I’ve got a piece of it but it’s worn by now. I’ve been rubbing it to understand the creases, the feel, the taste and the touch. But it’s ragged these days.

To be fair, it was just the hem of your shirt. I held it in my cold fingers when you walked beside me but you never noticed.

In high school we walked in solemn silence, two nations divided by our mountain. But we’ll climb mountains together—we share a common enemy after all. Our demon, our cold dead angry pieces sewn together like a patchwork quilt. Our monster hanging over us like our brittle souls. Let’s peel back layers to a better time, before all that angst and sadness.

It’s summer after all. And the forecast does look like rain.