Seventeen

by Cecelia Hagen

I slid to the kitchen linoleum—I liked linoleum,
I liked beer and drank can after can
until I reached the nirvana of seven, empties lying
with open eyes around me after I’d teased out
the last warm sips
by tilting to a steep angle
since I was taught not to waste
and every drop might hold a rainbow.

I liked the rotisserie
feeling in my head, the loosened limbs I couldn’t
quite control. That’s what I said, control,
though it came out sounding like contrail

and I thought of jets trailing white streams
against a blue sky, the blue sky
inside me like a secret,
the linoleum smooth and speckled,

a good place to lie down and dream of flying
like the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, what joy
to lift above the sand and sea, to achieve
freedom, even if brief, a soaring freedom.