That summer we were all Butt Rock and back seats, 

shooting fuzzy navel wine coolers, Marb Reds pinched  

between with our Too Hot to Handle lips. Jeans high and tight,  

crotches snug against our triple-snap body suits meant  

to make the boys behave. 

None of us had died yet, so we all acted as though we  

never would, let our boyfriends palm a breast in one hand,  

cocked gun in the other. Sometimes they’d let us practice,  

steady our wrists, slip their finger where they said ours  

should go. We’d shriek at each blast, even though we saw  

it coming, and they’d ease away the gun, say to each other,  

Watch out for this one.  

No one said a word, but we all knew what was going on  

when Dressler cranked “You Shook Me All Night Long”  

on his Alpine, grabbed the hand of one of the girls who  

wasn’t one of us, maybe from the county or the reservation, 

led her far enough into the thicket we could claim we didn’t  

see shit and believe it. 

A few years later, that same girl jumped off an overpass  

during rush hour. Or was she the one who had leukemia?  

Car accident? She could’ve been the one who got away  

but couldn’t stop seeing ghosts. Maybe she never came  

out of the woods. 

When we think of those nights, these are the things  

we remember: how we took care of each other—scraped  

away lipstick when it smeared skin, steadied the sticky  

bottles of wine coolers when we’d had too many, made curtains  

of jean jackets when we had to pee. We remember ourselves  

as the ones you better watch out for, but really,  

we were just the watchers.