Crayons
Larissa Wise


She liked my ink-stained jeans and
I liked her teal ponytail, so I
fished out the folded square with her number on it from
the sea of tobacco and ashes in
the bottom of my purse
and called her up.


She was at the beach
doing cartwheels and
handstands against the wall
with her Russian friend, and would I like to meet her cat
when she got back?


Over a blue mug of iced Ethiopian coffee we
laid our crayons on the table and let the sun
melt them together while I chewed on a toothpick
and arranged the splinters in
the shape of an onion.


I showed her a scab on my elbow
and she showed me one on her wrist.
We both cried, but blamed it on the onion.


Over a feast of beer and wasabi chips one night she said
that she smelled something, and maybe it was
Old Spice, and the only
reason she brought it up was because
she wore the opium spray that her grandma wore and
I wore a generic spray that was supposed to smell like the sea
but smelled like vinegar
mostly,
and whose was it and why
was it there?


And we cried again but
this time
there was no onion.