Birthday in Palm Springs

The winds made me crazy.

At King’s Highway diner

I did tarot for the waitress

and she drew a heart on my bill.

Every day I watched a boy

play dead in the pool.

His friends laughed at him

from their beach chairs.

“I won,” he’d yell.

“I beat all of you again.”

When a stranger in a cowboy hat

asked if I was born in 1984

I didn’t answer. I stared

at the San Jacinto Mountains

in his BMW. He said, “pull

the seat back,” so I did.

Most nights I played alive

at the bar, after dinner,

the hotel bathrooms, a fire

pit near my room.

“You remind me of no one,”

the cowboy said. It was

supposed to be a compliment.

I was supposed to be older

but I’ve been six years old

since I got here. Trying to write

this poem since I can remember.

Trying not to die and I don’t

want to die here. No one has been good.

No one has known what I am.