The first and only pickup line I ever received from a man was
You wound me, scrawled on a bar napkin and tossed in my lap
from over his shoulder. And it’s silly, but that was the only one
I ever needed in order to fall in love.
I once had a neighbor who lived in the house adjacent to mine;
she owned 43 cats and 22 Venus Flytraps. She was a modern-day
witch in Hansel & Gretel’s tale; all the children were warned away
from her house because their parents were afraid
the flytraps would eat them up.
But then I grew older and learned how to handle that man’s body
like a Japanese vase, the kind that gets cracked and then filled
with gold, because to be damaged at all
means to have been through hell and back again,
and to be all the more beautiful for it.
And while I realize that living a life with so many cats
and man-eating plants can be a lonely existence,
it’s the life my neighbor chose, and who am I to judge?
My version of being un-lonely consists of falling the hardest
for the men who give me the slightest bit of attention, and while
I’ll never get the eloquent pickup line, the kind that says,
The smell of your body, the taste of your skin, for you I would sin,
I’ll settle for the cheapest version of that I can find.
