I never said this out loud
but I have always called it
her lonely dress

because whenever she entered the bar with it on I knew
at some point in the evening
she’d be telling tell her beau of the moment
she was lonely,
so lonely,
with a slow wriggle
as she spoke.

You can guess how I knew this.

My friends called her
horsefaced,
crazy,
said she dipped into the pills
at her nursing job,
was wild, 
predatory, 
too much for me.

Yes.
And when she told me
she was only three years older
than me
and later related a passionate story
of seeing Janis Joplin
in concert, 
I did the math
and said to myself,

oh, she’s a liar too.

Let me tell you things, though:
I regret nothing,
and I still smile when I think of her
and

the pills.
All the drinks I bought her.
Piggybacking her out of the woods
because she couldn’t walk
after we’d stuck her battered Nova
deep in a bog at 4 AM.
Hearing her cry
the whole way out about her car.
Pills spilling from a pocket
and having to stop and gather them for her.
Driving her home at 7 AM
the unexpected fifty miles to her apartment.
Staying there with her,
holding her, not sleeping,
thrashing, blood on the sheets,
bites, welts, movement
I had never called out of myself,
tenderness, listening, barking insane
morning and afternoon
of something beyond lovemaking
for seven straight hours
before climbing out
to head home —

this story,
still hot and heavy on me,
this story of being twenty and 
contained in her fury
and strapped into her ride
by the sight of her Lonely Dress
and the slow dance wriggle
that took her
almost all the way to the floor —
yes,
having this story now
makes it all OK.