Online Romance (under A) Deer Head Mask
Last night at Anastacia's party, muffled through a deer
head mask, you tried to get my short attention (as you
pocketed your flask) to tell me of the one you'd
spotted who had gone and caught your eye. Yet you
seemed loath of talkin' to him. I said, 'Why don't you
just try?' You weren't exactly the master of discretion
with that mask coverin' your hair and your stained polo
with the ad for Tom's Inspection & Repair. I handed you
a bag of crackers and you ate a few, then laid the bag
down on the bushes dampened by an early fall dew. You
scratched your nose up under your awkwardly lopside
latex and plastic hood. Some guy asked how you were and
you said it was going, that it was going good. At
midnight, standing in the walkway with Christine and
not complacent, considering whether to approach the guy
someone had greeted 'Jason' your eyes buggy and wide,
staring up at the porch as deer eyelids did not blink
you tried to prep yourself. But Christine said, 'Just
do it, don't even stop and think.' But the thing was,
you hid away much more than your face. You wondered
could this 'Jason' replace the pieces of your soul that
you'd lost? It didn't seem worth takin' the chance, so
you left it like a middle school dance, awkward for the
distance: boys off to one side, boys on the other.
Still outside Anastacia's party, rumpled under a deer
head mask, Christine and some girl who was with her,
they were takin' you to task. They'd seen you watching
him and could assure that he was not yet taken.
Christine whined, 'Tap him on the shoulder if you wait
you'll be mistaken.' Your fingers, plaited, broke for
the bottle as she jawed, 'The change will do you good.'
You weren't hearin' that noise in your awkwardly
lopside latex and plastic hood. 'See the thing is,' you
explained, 'either they were never my friend or they'll
be tearin' me apart at the end. It always goes down
either way. So I'm gonna stay down here and hold my
peace on the lawn.' You would have been the spitting
shot of a fawn had the age not shown so strongly in
your gangly, cold-bitten fingers.
