lucky charm

when i was a child i wanted to be lucky.

obsessed with it. maybe

i could run into luckiness, not on purpose–

get dragged into it.

into something better.

i closed my eyes, trying to blur my dreams with my life:

tied up my hair, never went anywhere without a bag

(because you never know what someone might hand to you.)

i knew the whole time it wasn’t real,

but i couldn’t stop wanting it.

sometimes i still wake up expecting luck to be on my side,

missing a power i never had.

it’s hard to accept:

no matter how many times you dye your hair red,

it grows back brown every time.

the dream about the goat horns

and also the highway robbery,

riding shotgun. every kid i knew

was in the car. good lord, 

it felt like clear blue skies and perfect squares,

everything just right.

the singing in the car, the hands on the wheel,

even the goat horns on my head.

when the car got stopped, gun to my temple,

i talked the men down.

told them we were just high schoolers.

no money, heading home from a long day of 

something or other.

told them about the blue skies and 81.

they let us go, but not before snapping off my right horn.

maybe a consolation prize, maybe to sell on the black market.

who knows? the pain woke me up,

feeling my head.

i told no one about the dream about the goat horns,

afraid they wouldn’t understand how i can still feel

the ghost of that snap

sometimes

when the sky is blue enough.

someone give michelangelo a bottle of hair dye for me

because i’m still not totally sure i didn’t time travel.

he whined about neck pain,

paint in his eyes, and rude catholics.

i swung my legs, sitting on the scaffolding. forgetting i was deathly afraid of heights, 

too busy listening. i told him

i didn’t know much about being an artist,

but i was very familiar with rude catholics.

he asked what i was doing there in the first place;

i couldn’t answer him. i told him that next time—

if there was one—

i’d bring him hair dye. really piss off the pope.

he laughed and he laughed and he laughed.

said he liked to sculpt more than paint,

so i’d have to paint his hair for him.

said that he thought

maybe i was an angel,

with the weird clothes and the color-changing hair.

said he thought angels were supposed to be… older.

and wear more white.

i reassured him that i was nothing holy.

he went back to painting. i woke up.