Ravishing

The thin boy wrote a love poem for Lily on a scrap

torn from a Budweiser beer twelve-pack box.

Mostly, she noticed the shape of the scrap.

Africa, almost.

She imagined giraffes

which seemed like experimental animals to her.

Lily grew cold when she read the poem.

The thin boy had misspelled “ravishing.”

“You’re ravashing,” he’d written.

Lily imagined giraffes ungainly clomping away,

their necks swaying absurdly.

The thin boy once told Lily that love had no cure.

What did that mean, she wondered?

On the back of the poem she found the word “beer.”

Lily didn’t like beer.

And love?  She didn’t know where to begin.

--Mitchell Hegman