She tells me that she likes vintage music,

just like we do.

Do you like glam rock bands

from the eighties? she says.

She tells me about Quiet Riot,

and how the names of the songs

are spelled in ways we shouldn’t know about.

She sings to me, and she somehow gets me singing.

Come on feel the noise!

Girls, rock your boys!

She stops in the middle,

makes sure that I am headbanging.

Lisa, in and out of the room,

doodling pastels on giant paper,

laughs and headbangs with me.

Later, Gretchen tells me I have a cute voice,

that we should get along,

no matter what we look like.

Glow-in-the-Dark Stars

Beneath glow-in-the-dark stars

we listen to Duran Duran.

I stare at Lisa’s shelves:

a stuffed cat

with some of the whiskers

pulled out,

blue-and yellow-

painted frames filled

with old photographs

of people I don’t know.

My favorite is one

of Lisa when

she was little,

standing on a dock

over a green pond,

fishing with her dad, I think.

On the dresser

is a jewelry box

swirled with necklaces

and plastic bracelets,

trinkets spread over

the top onto the floor.

One side of her room

is a picture window

covered in a rain forest curtain.

I stare at the eyeball of a tapir

peering out from

the mudbank.

I put my sleeping bag down.

Is your mom really gonna

let me sleep in here? I ask.

Yeah, Lisa says, she doesn’t care.

We all sleep

in the planting room together,

don’t we? Besides—she smiles—

I want you to see the stars.

Finally, near her door,

a vintage three-section concert poster

of Joe Elliott, the lead singer of Def Leppard,

in leather pants

and a Union Jack tank top.

In one frame,

he is leaning into the crowd.

In another he is standing,

playing air guitar with the band,

and, in the lower half, his face,

cradling the mic.

He isn’t skinny in the poster,

but the crowd is still reaching

for him. He looks fierce. Unstoppable.

We spread out pencils and markers,

draw pictures.

She draws more pictures of Elysium,

the warrior queen, standing in the sun

on some high cliff.

Lisa is learning about perspective,

so she draws legs almost three-dimensionally,

stepping over a rise of green grass.

I draw my warrior, Thall, a hunter,

standing in the snow, his muscled arms

leaning on his spear

carved from a dragon’s tooth.

He looks out toward the valley beyond.

He is waiting for something.

I want him to be a true hero,

imagine how he might be a part

of Elysium’s kingdom

now that she is queen.

Lisa slides our drawings together,

holds them up beneath her desk lamp.

She pulls some tape from

the desk, sticks them to the wall.

She steps back

to look at the pictures,

puts her arm around my

shoulders. I feel the heavy,

perfect weight of her strong arm,