Last night at Anastacia's party, muffled through a deer 
head mask, you tried to get my short attention (as you 
pocketed your flask) to tell me of the one you'd 
spotted who had gone and caught your eye. Yet you 
seemed loath of talkin' to him. I said, 'Why don't you 
just try?' You weren't exactly the master of discretion 
with that mask coverin' your hair and your stained polo 
with the ad for Tom's Inspection & Repair. I handed you 
a bag of crackers and you ate a few, then laid the bag 
down on the bushes dampened by an early fall dew. You 
scratched your nose up under your awkwardly lopside 
latex and plastic hood. Some guy asked how you were and 
you said it was going, that it was going good. At 
midnight, standing in the walkway with Christine and 
not complacent, considering whether to approach the guy 
someone had greeted 'Jason'  your eyes buggy and wide, 
staring up at the porch as deer eyelids did not blink  
you tried to prep yourself. But Christine said, 'Just 
do it, don't even stop and think.' But the thing was, 
you hid away much more than your face. You wondered 
could this 'Jason' replace the pieces of your soul that 
you'd lost? It didn't seem worth takin' the chance, so 
you left it like a middle school dance, awkward for the 
distance: boys off to one side, boys on the other. 
Still outside Anastacia's party, rumpled under a deer 
head mask, Christine and some girl who was with her, 
they were takin' you to task. They'd seen you watching 
him and could assure that he was not yet taken. 
Christine whined, 'Tap him on the shoulder  if you wait 
you'll be mistaken.' Your fingers, plaited, broke for 
the bottle as she jawed, 'The change will do you good.' 
You weren't hearin' that noise in your awkwardly 
lopside latex and plastic hood. 'See the thing is,' you 
explained, 'either they were never my friend or they'll 
be tearin' me apart at the end. It always goes down 
either way. So I'm gonna stay down here and hold my 
peace on the lawn.' You would have been the spitting 
shot of a fawn had the age not shown so strongly in 
your gangly, cold-bitten fingers.