perhaps it was conquest
silly old I want to do this only becuase I can

her name was feather jones
i was 17 when I stole her from a
25 year old named jake peterson
or so I thought

she was a year older than me
pale skin and brown thick hair
she was into guys who liked death metal
and motorcycles

I was too young for her
but one night near the bon fire
at the beach I tried
I tried even though I knew my friend liked her more than I did
he watched me with her
this was the first time this was to happen
between me and this friend
women got in the way of friendships
well into my twenties

two weeks after the bon fire
I met her and her friends
near the tennis court
it was dusk and I was smoking cigarettes
leaning against my car
and watching
the high school tennis team
perform warm up excercises
these were the girls my mom would have wanted of me
the proper
the guilded
the athletes

I jumped into her friends truck
it was large, black, it towered over the other cars
it was in this truck that I began to mix vodka and orange juice
into a large plastic bottle
we drove to the beach
it was dark when we got there
when I opened the door I fell out of the truck and passed out immediatly
I had drank two liters of screw driver hell while sitting next to this girl
I passed out on the beach, she was sitting next to me I remember
I woke up an hour later and she wasnt there
I wandered the black field of sand looking for her
whispering her name
I found the others, the other couple fucking in the sand
I kept wandering
but I stopped whispering
in the distance I saw
her step out of a van parked under a street light in the distance
I walked towards her
it was a week later when I saw the bruises on her back
it was ten years later until I figured out what the bruises were from

ten years later, visiting old ghosts in a home town
I decided on an impulse to drive by her house and see if she was still there
I heard that she had run into trouble with the police
and that even at the age of 28
her parents had locked her up in the same house
she had lived in since high school

I saw her car parked outside
and I walked to her front door
her father answered the door
he let me in
when she saw me she couldnt stop laughing
she thought I was absurd
I had come thaat night
to set things right
what had happened ten years earlier
she couldnt stop from laughing
I left defeated
the past was still what it had always been
a misguided calander in reverse
calanders are supposed to hold promises
promises of things to come up in the future
when they are calanders in the past
they are like things carved in stone
like those hanging grave sites
carved into the sides of mountains

I keft her house and got drunk with a an old friend
from the bar
he knew her well
he told me one of my friends slept with her
a couple years back
he told me she was a dead fuck
I didnt know if I should cry or hit him
I sat there, doing neither
I couldnt make a conquest of the past