MELISSA CROWE—"OFTEN IN DREAMS SHE WAS MY GIRLFRIEND UNTIL I REMEMBERED, STILL ASLEEP, THAT IT WASN'T OKAY" (Issue 24)

Sugar House Review · Melissa Crowe's "Often in Dreams She was My Girlfriend Until I Remembered . . . "

OFTEN IN DREAMS SHE WAS MY GIRLFRIEND UNTIL I REMEMBERED, STILL ASLEEP, THAT IT WASN'T OKAY

Her hair was a miracle of brown-black curls,

spring coiled and shiny, and she sprayed it

with TRESemmé and hung it over the edge

of the bed while she slept on slumber-party

Saturday nights so she wouldn’t have to

wash it before church, and six birthmarks

half a shade darker than the rest of her creamy

olive skin traced her cheek from one earlobe

to the corner of her mouth. At video dances,

held tight to the stiffening groin of my own

partner, I watched her unfocused eyes

and bored frown while a punk kid, thick chain

padlocked around his neck, nuzzled hers.

Did she like it? I couldn’t tell, but when they

broke up, he carved her name into his chest

with the point of his knife. I still think of how

those letters, crooked and keloid, must mark him

after all these years. She introduced me,

kid from a canned-fruit-cocktail family,

to the pomegranate, its pressed paper rind,

those nestled ruby cells, each with a seed

that nearly filled it. So many tiny morsels

and so much work to get their meager juice.

But sweet enough to make it worth it. To stain

my hands, my face, my precious white cotton

leggings with the delicate cuff of lace at each ankle.

On a night when we’d driven three hours south

to walk the strange, thrilling circuit of the nearest

shopping mall (Orange Julius! The Gap!), we lay

on our stiff-sheeted hotel bed in our tank tops

and underwear, facing each other in the dark,

and she asked me if I’d ever thought about

kissing a girl. I said yes. Then we stayed silent

and still until morning, neither of us rolling over

to get comfortable or adjusting our hard pillows

or hanging our hair over the bed’s edge

to keep it neat. I could hardly hear her breathe.

ABOUT THE POET 

Melissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of 

Wisconsin Press, 2019), and her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming 

in Four Way Review, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, and Thrush, 

among other journals. She’s coordinator of the MFA program at UNCW, where 

she teaches poetry and publishing.

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