I’d sit and pick the foam from the swivel chair
and look at girls that hung from nails:
Samantha Fox in stone-washed jacket
with nothing underneath except a pair
of well-positioned braces;
cave girls with grubby cheeks and furry boots,
their back-combed hair held up with bones.
The radio sang I wandered out in the world for years
while you just stayed in your room.
I didn’t touch the page-a-day diary
or the ashtray full of crumpled nubs,
but hugged the schoolbag on my knee
and watched him in overalls, welding mask
and leather gloves, like a deep-sea diver
in a film I saw about a giant squid
that could suck a man clean from his suit.