Talking about dead pets, Stephanie, the woman from Tulsa,
told me about her parakeet and how she’d kept it in her freezer, 
between the lima beans and broccoli, neither of which she liked, 

how she had bought the parakeet as a surprise for her husband, 
and how the parakeet one second was chirping on his shoulder 
and the next he was collapsed on the floor dead of a stroke. 

Something about hockey and women, they don’t mix, 
like another time I was a junior in high school and took a senior 
with the sweetest eyelashes to a game and between periods, 
 
while others went for refills or a stale package of Twizzlers, 
handed her a Valentine’s horror story I’d written for her, 
though I never told her, and how when finished she pulled 

a pen from her purse and started to mark up the story, 
explaining when to use “each other” and when “one another,” 
and how later after my folks picked us up and left me

to escort her to the door for what I’d hoped would be a kiss
instead ended up an invitation into the glare of her living room, 
her mom boiling us green tea and her telling me about

John 14:6 and her personal relationship with Christ. 
And all I wished was to be with my parents, in the back seat 
of our car, far from this or any other living room, wished I didn’t 

face a long, icy walk home, just as I’m sure Stephanie 
from Tulsa wished she’d never put the parakeet in her freezer, 
wished she’d resisted the urge to buy the thing in the first place, 

her husband laughing and with her now, and not found herself
in a funky-smelling arena in Boston, with a temp with whom 
she’d shared an office for all of two days, talking about dead pets.