I Hate Lava Lamp Boy

I Hate Lava Lamp Boy • Famke Halma

I miss the glow of Christmas lights,

of fights the night of Christmas Eve and bruised blueberries.

Of carnivals and their carousels and churro stands,

haloed and technicolored with their grease and neon gleam.

Of forgotten drive-in theaters and hazy headlights,

trucks rolling through the grass like lovers on a picnic blanket.

Of burning red lava lamps in the dirty room of a boy who told me

he doesn’t believe in space cowboys.

But I do, I do.

I believe in them as much as I believe that this body of mine can

return to being sacred and holy ground,

time and time after being sacrificed and violated.

I believe in them as much as I believe that there are tiny little creatures

living on Venus, waving their tiny little hands at Mercury in the distance,

waiting for a signal in return.

But the tiny little creatures on Mercury don’t wave back.

They never do.

You can hear Venus sigh all the way from Mars because it’s so lonely.

So I tell Lava Lamp boy that he can screw himself.

I tell him there’s no way that I could ever turn my back on the tiny little creatures.

I am tears unchristened, heart unburdened and unburned,

because somehow we’re okay that the sun is also a star.

Yes, I believe in cowboys floating through space and pretty girls on picnic blankets

and drive-in theaters and hazy headlights and

crumbly churro sugar and rickety carousels

and arguing in the dark and forgotten blueberry cupcakes in a broken oven

and Christmas lights I will throw away next year because too many of them are broken.

You can’t tell me it doesn’t count for something.

Because I do.

I do.