The Summer of Disappearing

The summer that Lisa sprouted crushes
On Joey and Phillip was a mild summer,
The cloud that would later drop
Like a dark net
Was still missing from the tennis courts
Where we waited for the fall.
Lisa talked about boys all summer.
Boys are so retarded,
She pulled on the sagging net,
They want to see 'em, but when you finally
Bare 'em, they don't know what to do.
She shook the pole, then let go
And twirled
With her arms stretched out like a music-box ballerina.
They just stand there and look;
It's so boring if all they're gonna do is stare.
Neither of us had much to stare at that year.
Our jagged shadows raced ahead of us,
Restless as calves whose too-long hind legs
Push them down paths they don't want to go.
She became silent as she turned,
Wobbling, turning faster
And wilder until I thought
She would crash in a heap on the clay court.
She looked like a top spinning out of control,
The way they always look right before they go over
The table's edge,
All her colors blending, faster
And faster, until all I knew of her had disappeared
Into a darkening, funneling force of nature
Moving toward the inevitable.

Michelle Shamasneh has lived for the past year in Hiram, Georgia, which to her great regret does not have a bookstore. She is currently finishing up her M.A. in Creative Writing at Georgia State University in Atlanta. By this time next year, she hopes to be teaching English at a local high school.