Jessica Laser

We did dangerous and stupid things
Were dangerous and stupid
Ignorant and arrogant
We did things we saw people do

Saved by what we didn’t know
Could happen

We were just getting young
Caught dangerous and stupid
With our educations written all over us
Our huge, expensive educations

We were so caught up

In danger and stupidity
With our big, empty eyes
Our stupid, heavily lined eyes
Our energies, eyes with the stakes
Emptied out of them
Night diner fluorescence
Our youth was caught

In the glare of

I had a hot chocolate
The boys had omelets

You could dim us

We wept and fasted, wept
And prayed and our periods came

Actually, we were pregnant

We had sex like a dictionary

We wanted to be other
For others were better
Than we were to ourselves

With our stupid eyes and bigger mouths
We were pregnant with ourselves

In the Water Tower
At the makeup counter
We were bitchy and hungry
And blamed other women
Our youth caught in their glare

By pissy trucks and passing grain
We drove dangerously, stupidly
Unto passing trucks who honked
We did danger and left nothing out

Sun caught their windshields
As we passed, speeding
Each toward more Midwest
A place I didn’t know
I was from

Until trees spit moss
And Shasta loomed
And hot springs waited
For the time we’d go

I always said what kind of person I was
I was that kind of person