if you’re good for a crime
okay
i’m with you
if you’re good for a dark drive
if you’re good for torn up letters
if you read the letter already
and destroyed it
but the information
is banging around in your head
like a threatening inlaw
like a wild goat wagon
if you’re drunk on a bridge
and you look down at a girl
if there’s a girl in a headlock
and the girl is too happy
if a jersey’s retired
if a name is replaced
if you’re toasting the strangers
did you take all my feelings
if your remorse is okay
if murder by icicle
if you’re flipping a coin
if you sneak into my house
if there’s a condom on your windowsill
but no furniture in your room
if there’s a girl alongside you
with a suitcase and miniskirt
if there’s a ticket in your hand
and the ticket is to here
if there’s a couch that is burning
you burn the hooker shoes too
if there’s a forest that’s crashing
if there’s a call from berlin
if there’s a hippie medallion
if there’s a staircase of ladies
if there’s a visible humming
if there’s a speck of a town
and you left it forever
if there’s no concern
the devil calls it a problem
but i have to keep going
fighting boys from revere
push them down in a parking lot
never go to a doctor
there’s a part here that’s winning
there’s a secret drawer
there’s a ring and a blindness
if you carried a lie
it was some kind of accident
if there was a chest
buried under an oak
and inside of that chest
if there was a graveyard
and you stole all its flowers
if there was a window
and you broke it
and you taped it up
if there was a windowless room
if there was blood on a tshirt
if there was ever a time
to take me aside in the dark
Halie Theoharides lives in western Massachusetts. She is a student of Flying Object's Creative Writing Workshops. Read more of her poetry in this magazine here.