By Misti Velvet Rainwater
Date: 31 January 2000

Conquest #7

a week gone by
and I am still
looking for clues
to prove to myself
that you happened
    to me
last Friday night
tonight I finally
took the gray sweater
I had worn on our date
and tossed onto
my cluttered dresser
and hung it up
in the closet
but not until
I had inhaled the stale smell
of cigarette smoke
tonight I threw
a small party
for myself
stir fried some vegetables
drank a frosty beer
painted an old rotary phone
with all my different shades
of nail polish
did myself a favor
and carried out the garbage
scraped the candle wax
off the kitchen counter
loaded the dishwasher
studied a screenplay
you happened, for sure
I know you weren't 
a hallucination
or yet another fickle figment
of my fertile imagination
because there's an alligator
on my bedside table
adorned with Mardi Gras beads
and there's a look
on my face
that says
This Shit is Getting Old.