got it: all these fancy
flavored seltzer waters
taste less like a dream
than a dream the next
morning—one which we
barely remember having
but feel unusually desperate
to describe later.
All we remember is that
we were seven
and washing down pizza
and sheet cake with
Orange Slice, 7UP,
50/50, or Upper 10,
something like that—
at a pizza party
in the loud neon arcade
of throbbing black-
lit bowling alley.
Everyone there
was equally poor
at bowling; everyone's favorite
band was Salt-N-Pepa,
so no one argued;
and the grown-ups, too
were like friendly ghosts or
sentinels in the corner,
the way they were hanging
back and chatting and really
getting into their cigarettes.
