Losing Speed by Laura Kasischke

When it’s over I’ll say.
There were nice nights.
Some of them taste
like my whole life.
Like the August night
a neighbor paid me
to dance on his picnic table.
The Milky Way smeared
like smoke across the sky.
My mouth open, air
everywhere
and his face lit and floating
on the star of a cigarette.
I was ten and didn’t know
I was naked
until now.
Virginity like a memory
of stumbling from the sky,
seeing my soul tumble
from the picnic table to earth,
tossed through my ribs
like a stone without me.
I get older and think of myself
as that thing, dropped
accidentally and forever
into the ocean of the past.
Like the taste of soap
tonight on the Titanic, wine
and cellos
and everyone is beautiful, rich
and sleeping
and you say across a candle,
I always want to be in this bathtub with you.
And I say, Relax.
We’re losing speed.
Look how my breasts
have started to sink.