Gravity

She enters with a box, my old sweatshirt draped over the top,
Setting it on my coffee table, she steps back and waits,
burying her eyes like she can’t bear to meet mine,
So instead she's staring hard in self-defiance at the faded cloth
as if she were trying to make everything beneath it disappear

I gave it to her the night we snuck into Mulholland Park and
took back our playground from the present day
In navy, in darkness, her unspoken elegance was silently resplendent,
In charcoal, it was like I was never there

I tossed my bag over the fence and helped her to retrieve it,
following in my own subtle grace while she withdrew a bottle of cider,
Passing it off so she could hang upside-down from the monkey bars and
taking it back in whispered laughter,

She dangled there and tried to sip, but it
just ran up her face and into the dirt,

And, even now, she’s never hated me more
than when I tried to tell her physics didn’t work that way