Birthday in Palm Springs
The winds made me crazy.
At King’s Highway diner
I did tarot for the waitress
and she drew a heart on my bill.
Every day I watched a boy
play dead in the pool.
His friends laughed at him
from their beach chairs.
“I won,” he’d yell.
“I beat all of you again.”
When a stranger in a cowboy hat
asked if I was born in 1984
I didn’t answer. I stared
at the San Jacinto Mountains
in his BMW. He said, “pull
the seat back,” so I did.
Most nights I played alive
at the bar, after dinner,
the hotel bathrooms, a fire
pit near my room.
“You remind me of no one,”
the cowboy said. It was
supposed to be a compliment.
I was supposed to be older
but I’ve been six years old
since I got here. Trying to write
this poem since I can remember.
Trying not to die and I don’t
want to die here. No one has been good.
No one has known what I am.
