The Hypothetical Girl Read Online Free Page A

terrain
,
where I will get dizzy from the altitude
,
I will go above your timber line

I will find the beautiful places

that make me swoon
.
I will go to all the places you recommend

and some you have forgotten
.
I will travel you without a map

or compass, I will navigate

by the stars and the moon
,
the planet we live on
,
my own bones, they will tell me

how to crawl inside your laughter

and I will sleep there
.
II
    Tonight I will be the student of you
.
I will study the smallest

and the greatest parts of you
,
the lines and crannies of you
,
the little accidents of you
.
Your scars and your muscles
,
your skin and hips
.
I will study the small country of each hand

isthmus of neck, the great plains of your back

I will follow your numbers, research your skin
,
learn your mouth, your eyes

There is an algebra of you

and I will solve for x
.
III
    Tonight I will be the professor of you
.
I will teach you the ways of me
,
the backroads, the unseen of me
,
I will show you the how and the why

and the where of me
,
places I have not been in a long time

and maybe never been
.
I will take you to the lakes of me
,
the full harvest moon

of me, the secrets of me
,
the known of me
,
I will show you the long toothed scar

on my left foot

where they opened me up

and sewed me back
,
In fact, I will show you all the places

I have been broken

and healed again
,
my blessings

and my wounds
,
the gifts of me, the solaces
,
the carnival ride of me
,
the candy of me
,
the light of me in the dark
.
    So, after she sent this poem, as you might imagine, Myra felt a little vulnerable. It had not been a limerick or anything like a limerick. It was not a poem with a joke in it or a joke with a poem in it. It was a serious real-life love poem. But then he had said he was in love with her, right? Or was he being flip? Three weeks went by.
    We repeat here (and italicize) for emphasis:
three weeks
. No return e-mail from Louis.
    “Ummm. Hi?” she finally wrote. “Sorry if you hated my poem.”
    Still nothing. “Umm, wow, you really hated it.”
    Finally, a Louis message appeared in her in-box.
    It was this:
    “Been busy. Lots of stuff with my job. Going on a quick backpacking trip to Senegal.”
    Senegal? Quick? Like really?
she thought.
    Finally, stumped beyond stumped, she wrote to her best friend, Lenore (yes, she for whom her kayak hadbeen named). Lenore was a playwright and poet who lived in Manhattan and the smartest cookie around. She “knew from relationships,” she liked to say, and was a huge yenta, fixing up everyone they knew, successfully, for years.
    “Lenore, help,” Myra e-mailed.
    “Not the limerick guy still,” Lenore wrote back.
    “Yes, that very one. So would you believe it if some guy told you he was going to Senegal?”
    “Hmmm, Senegal,” wrote Lenore. “Is he a diplomat?”
    “No.”
    “Aid worker?”
    “No.”
    “Does he work for an NGO or for Doctors Without Borders?”
    “No,” wrote Myra. “Backpacking.”
    “Then no, the answer is no, I would not believe a guy who said he was going to Senegal to go backpacking. I think they might be having a civil war. Or are about to have one. Or just finished one up.”
    “That is what I was afraid of.”
    “So tell me,” Lenore wrote, “what did you do?”
    “Nothing! I sent him a poem.”
    “Limerick?”
    “No.”
    “Don’t tell me you sent him a sonnet. You must never send a sonnet before the first date.”
    “It wasn’t a sonnet.”
    “A villanelle, then?”
    “Nope.”
    “Not a pantoum—please tell me you didn’t send him a pantoum!”
    “It wasn’t a pantoum. By the way, I hate pantoums.”
    “Me, too. I think everyone hates pantoums.”
    “Well it wasn’t a pantoum.”
    “So what, then? What did you send him?”
    “I sent him a free verse poem. A love poem.”
    “Oh, honey,” Lenore wrote. “Not free verse.”
    “What?”
    “A free verse love poem? Tell me it wasn’t in sections.”
    “It was. It had three