Valentines: “This September Will Mark Twenty Years Since I First Laid Eyes on You” by Mya Matteo Alexice

THIS SEPTEMBER WILL MARK TWENTY
YEARS SINCE I FIRST LAID EYES ON YOU

you brought this once-girl with you
to shul some saturday mornings, both
of us armed with a stack of Yu-Gi-Oh
playing cards in our pockets. in the basement
of a house of the L—rd, you made me
forget I was once a girl in a room
full of boys. I don’t think you
ever let me win. we gambled
and G—d watched.

            x

your family redid the lower level
of your house. when I visited two
springs ago, the relics of our memories
had faded, their outlines smudged
like watercolors. just upstairs
is where I once spat out a baby
tooth, a casualty of that day’s
play fighting. a few rooms over,
saturday cartoons burned into
our eyes in long exposures. if I
listen closely, I can hear
our revenants
moving like planchettes
across a board.

            x

as our quarterlives approach,
I can’t remember the last time
you texted me first. our threads
are the unwinding vestiges
of some exhausted skein.
am I merely grasping
at a ghost? pretending
childhood play can weather
almost twenty years?
if we were flirting
I’d say you lost interest
by now and let what we had fade
into ether. but some part
of me clutches. some part
of me whines. some things
are too important to be
erased by human hands.

            x

consider, instead:
the time a nail crucified me
in your living room closet.
I cried and my foot bled
and you went white with fear.
or this: me as a child listening
to you and your mother
trill Hanukkah prayer;
me listening
without understanding
like how one hears
the unpronounceable name
of G—d.

            x

I wish I had your faith,
my oldest friend.
it is so hard to trust
that a sacred text will reveal itself
eventually. how does one revel
in the not knowing, and the wavering?
the doubt that builds a cathedral
around your bones?

            x

consider the only truth that matters:
I visited you yesterday, thinking this
poem finished. It was the first night
of Hanukkah and you set a yarmulke
atop my crop of curls,
bestowing upon me boyhood
like you had done
so many years
before. Prayersong fell
out of your mouth
and in that moment
I swear I understood
every word.

About Mya Matteo Alexice

Mya Matteo Alexice is a nonbinary, Black and white graduate of the Rutgers-Newark MFA. Their poems can be found in or are forthcoming in publications such as Copper Nickel, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Bennington Review, Barrelhouse, The Pinch, Cherry Tree, underblong, and elsewhere. They’ve received scholarships from Fine Arts Work Center and the Mellon Mays Foundation, and their debut poetry collection, A Shape We've Yet to Name is forthcoming from Game Over Books. They enjoy video games where they can make the characters kiss.