Jane never moved her dish from the sink

to the dishwasher. Jane never ate fruit

with spots or fruit that was too soft, and never

the end pieces of bread, wasteful as she was.

Jane argued with her stepfather high and wide

as a cliff across the dinner table, whose mouth’s

high roof echoed his chewing, and his drinking.

Jane lied about where she was going. Jane

watched TV too loud. Jane spent too much time

with her door shut. Jane spent too much time

at Mia’s house. Jane said, Dammit, Dammit,

which the baby began to say.

Jane lied about where she was going. Jane

was starting to look dense, but also showed

the potential to look like Barbie,

if she kept her waist, looked ridiculous

pouting in front of the lone dolphin circling

in his blue tank, looked so ridiculous

her mother had to take a picture. Jane

dyed her hair indigo blue. Jane lied

about where she was going. Getting off the bus,

she bought eyeliner from the frosty,

air-conditioned CVS, pulling the sweat-hot bills

from her pocket, and went to the boy’s house

on Summer Meadow Lane, echoing

and empty in the gated community,

his father gone with the other family,

mother driving the old white-haired woman

she cared for in her old heavy Pontiac.

Jane lied about where she was going.

Jane lied about where she was going,

into his bedroom where the TV was

and the door shut. Jane was failing all over,

even too chicken to take clothes off.

Requiring a nudge, and a shove. Basically,

she was useless, felt the room turn over

in its late afternoon shadow, felt the sheets

his mother washed and stretched over the mattress.

Jane loved, years ago, sitting in the backseat

of her father’s car in late winter, when

he drove to the empty seasonal lot

and ripped the car into circles. She loved

the engine revving like in the movies,

its shrieked tire like in the movies, she

loved slamming into the side of the car,

laughing, bruised, a little afraid. And her father

lived with another woman now, and that woman’s children

laid in their own beds, and when Jane had visited

up north, her father brought her back to the lot

and put her in the drivers’ seat, let her hit

turns like a boomerang, stall the car into a grind,

and when she looked over she saw his hand

clutching the door handle, his face not really laughing.

Each act had its necessary duration:

in the bedroom, the sitcom episode rolled,

the choice problem arose, got solved, and then

the episode ended. The boy was so bad at it,

but so sure of himself Jane thought she might

laugh, her shirt and then the next pushed off. Her

hands over her face, and then opening.

Like parting curtains.