Us

Maybe it was us,
those people we hated
on the blacktop,
in the red-dirt track circle
around the football field,
legs dragging long lines of sand
across the high school
plateau.

It could have been us,
that we ran from,
pants around our ankles,
skin tucked up underneath our shoulderblades,
we always did have a pinched
look about us. So,
it could have been us

in the art room, at the board
writing calligraphy across
painted flowers,
making captions with our teeth,
making hickeys on the boys' necks
because everything's a canvas.

Wouldn't you say
that it could have been us and
everything about ourselves,
that it was us, wearing those scuffed
fucking converse
while we moaned about
how much we hated
everyone else.