The Gratification Comes in the Doing

I gripped tight and scraped

            my key across his car, marred

the perfect green- a color I never

            liked anyway- revealing rough-hewn

silver, something more suited for a girl

            like me, who maybe likes Cassady and

James Dean a little too much to have

            been born in the nineties, no matter

how close I was to ’89, like my brother-

            who doesn’t like James Dean at all, and

who never was as reckless as I,

            never ran barefoot outside,

but for some reason, he’s the artist

             and I’m left wishing I could be the art,

           

playing in flames with a sing-song tone,

swinging on a seesaw and all alone,

           

staring through violet lenses at the

            ugly paint still embedded in the key in my fist.