Saturday night in the parking lot behind the grocery
felt bigger than it really was.
A few cars.
A boom box with weak batteries.
Cigarette tips flashing in the dark.
Laughter bouncing off cinder block.
The whole cheap kingdom made of tail lights, denim, hair spray, and nerve.
We leaned on hoods like we owned the world
or had at least taken out a short lease on it
till midnight.
Everybody talked louder than needed.
That is part of it.
Every joke had to travel.
Every story had to act like history.
Every heartbreak had to sound fatal
or it did not count.
Somebody always had a bottle hidden somewhere.
Somebody always knew who liked who,
who got dumped,
who got caught,
who was sneaking out,
who was lying,
who was already halfway gone from this town
in their own head.
The girls looked impossible in the lot lights.
The boys looked tough till they laughed wrong.
The music came and went with static.
A train passed once in the distance
and made everybody shut up for one breath,
like the dark itself had shifted gears.
I loved those nights.
I hated them.
That is the right way to say it.
I loved being near the center of things.
I hated how fast the center moved.
One minute you were in the joke,
in the circle,
lit up by your own clever mouth.
The next minute you were one step outside it
with your hands in your pockets
trying to act like you had chosen that spot.
Then the night would end all at once.
Cars starting.
Doors slamming.
One pair peeling off together.
One friend too drunk to say much.
One song cut short in the middle.
And the parking lot would go back to being only blacktop,
trash by the curb,
oil marks,
faded white lines,
nothing holy,
nothing grand.
That change got me every time.
How a place could hold all that noise,
all that wanting,
all that posing and praying and almost-touching,
then by one in the morning look like it had never meant a thing.