They are always throwing parties, but we are the best at making our own And now there’s a party in the bathroom and we’re learning to kiss on our tiptoes on the tile with our hands to the sink grenadine-stained tongues fogging up the mirror We are filling up the room With our red cheeked shrieks We are scaring the old ladies clicking kitten heeled ankles at the bottom of the stalls We are saving faces under our fingertips when Oma walks out. The older girls teach us how to steal cherry flowing cocktails from the bar, How fast to drink them so our mothers won’t know We are learning to graze our knees running past the boys in the parking lot We are learning how to open up our throats, how to always win the race. We are learning to zest a lemon’s skin into the bowl to suck the extra juice from the hangnail pulled with our teeth. They teach us where to push in with our thumbs how to get through to the core of each other’s rotten fruit parts. We are learning how to catch ghosts on our tongues, hold onto them as a story for later. We are learning to keep some things to ourselves We are learning to swallow down tears and where to slip them in our sleeves How tightly we need to hold each other's hands before we leave the sink You want know all our secrets, you want us to whisper them with a lip to your ear You want all the fireflies we keep tucked safe in our mouths. The kisses we saved up for you are turning into ghost stories And the girls just keep getting older. I think I would have liked to kiss you back when you’d asked; but I’d have tried to too softly. And anyways, you told me you don’t believe in ghosts.