Wayne

Why be sixteen

when you could have a tattoo.

After all.

God, you wanted to kick school

and become addicted to a wage.

Tony hired you on afternoons at the garage.

Tony, Joe and Geraldo were burly

and sent you out for submarines.

After an afternoon

of buffing pumps and divorcees in leaking Camaros

Tony’d take you to his hood

and raise it

and let you tremble

before his older, yet Venusian

Lamborghini.

It took an entire week

of scrubbing squeegees

‘cross the wet rears

of mollycoddled clientesses

to finally afford

that Sacred Heart of Jesus

sweetening your deltoid.

I saw it, too.

I saw it when you changed your shirt.

I saw your body

beneath a balustrade of white walls,

beneath the galaxy of topless women stacked

atop the tins of antifreeze.

You had the sexiest skeleton.

We looked at each other.

“Employees only beyond this point”