A Poem for your Thoughts

Pantomime Assassin: March 30, 1981

During my sixth grade year, I bubbled with hormones
And squeezed myself inside wooden desks, hot haircuts,
and named-brand denim. I even learned to fake
hatred for my school teacher. As I twisted myself
round to throw off a wandering hand from my bra strap,
a messenger knocked on our door.
The president has been shot, he said, Reagan is shot!

Electric impulses lit up our frozen faces:
unsure whether to smile or shake. They left
us alone, and John sidled over to me,
clenched his palm on my forearm, and asked
in a voice of forced-caring: Are you okay?
I nodded. My thoughts twirled over his fingers
on my arm and my stomach jackknifed. I smiled.
I had learned, like Jodie Foster when she played
the teen prostitute, how to belong to a man.

Someone brought in a television, and we watched;
I studied the fall of James Brady, the face of John Hinkley, Jr.
I learned to call him:
assassin.

Days would pass before the letter appeared.
He wrote to her: I would abandon
the idea of getting Reagan in a second if I
could only win your heart and live out the rest of my life
with you.
I thought of John and his fake concern,
of Sam, Lamar, and Jake on the bus
with their hands, palms up, in the seats where
we wanted to rest after long days,
of Mike and Jim at the skating rink,
begging for one kiss, one touch, just one…

Foster graduated from Yale;
she speaks French fluently; she is one our best actors.
Hinkley adored her in his own way.
President Reagan was one of our most popular presidents.

In a school desk, 1981, I watched TV news footage
and revolted against a single touch that thrilled me
only minutes before. A splitting.
The bus ride home that day was still:
Everyone understood obsession’s outcome.

But it would begin again the following day:
the historical pantomime of grabbing
and pulling away.
My brain split: a rip made like a stray bullet,
flesh torn down the center of my expectations.
Hinkley: my crazed assassinator.

Abandon.