Partly Cloudy

Title Page

Table of Contents

Dedication

Copyright

A Girl's Tears, Her Songs

On the Side of a Bike Path

Not Yet

Composition

Burrs & Thistles

Facts of Life

I Saw What You Did

Rough Hands

Stars

Natural Talent

Obsession

Don't You See

Signs

Strategy

Exaggeration

Meaning What?

Consequence

Full Price

Jealousy

Black Books

Barriers

Testing You

The Big Chill

First Kiss

Anonymous Tug

Paper Boat

Fake Love

The Invisible Girl

Neighborhood

Horses

Playing Football

Lazy Cupid

For the Love of Dogs

Little Puppy

Pears

Bossy Girl

When I Lost You

Time with You

Sparks

Home Alone, and Liking It

A Boy's Body, His Words

Mirror

The Second Button

Open House

Vegan for Your Love

A Long Weekend Without You

So Much Alike

Fall Dance

Country Music

Beautiful Trouble

Busted

Tree Bark

Simple Me

A Certain Weakness

The Koi at the Museum Pond

The Birds and the Bees

Boy Artist

Rumors

Faces

Rationale

A Lesson for Us

Eternal Love

Danger

Time

Pomegranate as My Heart

Driftwood

Getting to Know You

Imagination

A View of Heaven

Forest of Boulders

Leaving the Bookstore

Love Medicine

Spreading Love

Mystery

Hard Work

Iowa Evening

Playing Our Parts

Out in Nature

An Act of Kindness

About the Author

To Isabel Schon
It's 40–Love, and your serve

Copyright © 2009 by Gary Soto

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Graphia, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Harcourt Children's Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2009.

Graphia and the Graphia logo are trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Test set in Berling FT Std
Designed by Linda Lockowitz

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Soto, Gary

Partly cloudy: poems of love and longing/Gary Soto.
p. cm.

1. Teenagers—Poetry. 2. First loves—Poetry. 3. Love poetry, American. 4. Young adult poetry, American. I. Title.

PS3569.O72P37 2009
811'. 54—dc22
2008022267

ISBN: 978-0-15-206301-6 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-547-57737-1 paperback

Manufactured in the United States of America

DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

4500335135

What was our future? I turned over
Your hand and studied your palm.
I noted two lines, one short, the other long.
I looked at mine—three lines,
One filled with sweat from our three-mile ride.
I wondered to myself,
Why three?
Then I knew—you were the first
To lie with me on a blanket,
And two others would follow,
Neither as beautiful.
As you stood up,
Shaking grass from your hair,
I gripped your hand—pinched it, really.
Months from now you will not be mine.

The weakest petals
Blow from the flowering tree,
And I think of myself
As a part of that tree,
My petals intact.
Not yet, I tell you,
We're young, just
Coming into bloom,
Our roots sinking
Daily into the earth.
Not yet, I tell you,
I a small tree,
You a taller, bending
Tree. The sun
Will roll over us,
And if a cloud
Of worry throws lightning,
Let's remember our fear.

Cold day, cold without you,
Ice hanging from the eaves like teeth
And the sun riding out of town before I changed
Out of my pajamas. To get warm, I opened a can
Of alphabet soup, got it boiling,
And poured it into a bowl. The bowl was warm
As your hand. I liked that, steam curling
As I carefully carried it to the table.
I drank from the lip of the bowl,
And used a chopstick to form
I love you
From the tangle of floating letters.
I drank that sentence and began to glow.

What gifts do you bring me?
I see you walking
Across the baseball diamond,
A stick like a sword
Whacking at the tall grass.
The tips of your shoes
Will be green
As our love is green,
And your hair is the color
Of wheat. You see me,
And I wave.
You drop your stick
And run to me
Like Mercury,
Burrs, thistles, flakes
Of grass hooking
On your pant cuffs.

 

Later, at our favorite
Place at the river,
I'll whisper, “Do you love me?”
And think how other
Girls want to grab
You like those burrs
And thistles. Jealous,
I'll pluck every one of them
And flick them into the wind...

The bee will touch the flower,
And the flower will not
Complain. The weight
Of the bee is like a teaspoon
Of honey, and its wings
Transparent as the boy in fifth period—
He likes me, a bee hovering
Above as we share a microscope.
Am I his flower? We almost touch shoulders
When we bend to look
At the slide. We laugh.
I'm then stung—he leaves
My side and hovers over
A hippie girl named Sunflower.
In spring, boys don't last.

You plunged your giant hand
Into your pocket
For dimes and nickels.
Some pennies rolled
Into the server's hand
At McDonald's,
The one place we can afford.
I heard you stutter,
“Chocolate, no, I mean—strawberry,”
My favorite flavor.
With two straws, we left
To sit on a bench—
Two pigeons stared at us.
When we lowered our faces
Toward that rosy milk shake,
Our eyes locked on each other,
And as we bumped heads,
Both of us almost
Choked from giggling.

 

I saw what you did—
You pretended to drink
From the straw.
You let me have most
Of the milk shake.
That was nice.
You called me sweet,
Strawberry sweet.

Lotion is a slippery essence
Applied on a winter day

 

When an icy wind sings through the bare trees.
But I prefer my hands rough.

 

This way, when I hold yours,
You won't slip away.

I was spooked by a possum, the crunch of leaves,
Something going
hoot, hoot
in a tree.
I jumped when a fish jumped in the creek—
How you laughed your beautiful laugh.
You were guiding me along that creek
And finally up a hill to view the stars
Set deep against the black, black sky.
You held my hand. You said,
“You're my star.” Here,
I
laughed.
Was this some line? You kissed me,
Then said the stars were really dead
But their light was moving earthward
And influencing everything from the seas
To our love. Yes, you used the word
love.
I pulled my hair back.
You pressed your body against mine.
No longer scared of possums, the rustling leaves,
Or the sounds in the trees,
I was happy there was something called stars.

You brought out a can of chicken noodle soup
And set its contents in a pot
Over the stove's collar of blue flames.
“Wow,” I said, “you can cook.”
The refrigerator's bulb shone on your handsome face
When you brought out a block of cheese—
You deftly cut little squares
And placed them onto saltines.
“Where did you learn all this?” I asked,
And you shrugged your shoulders.
I even liked how you turned on the kitchen faucet
With your elbow—you had to keep
Your fingers clean—and whittled little pieces
Of salami. We ate looking at each other,
Me so obviously in love. I asked, “Do you iron?”
You nodded—god, you have shiny hair!
After we ate, you asked me to take...
To take off my blouse! “Slow down,” I said,
Hands on my hips. Then I understood.
You gave me a sweatshirt to wear
While you sewed on my loose fourth button.
Where did you learn this,
Multitasking lover boy of mine?

Three photos of you on the front of my binder,
Two inside when I flip it open.
Downloaded photos of you on my bedroom wall,
In a locket my cat paws jealously,
And in my diary I lock with a key.
I'm obsessed with you. This spring wherever
I turn I see you, even in the faces
Of cumulus clouds I could pinch like a cheek.
I had my eyes checked last week
And the optometrist with beady eyes said,
“A curious case. Young lady, there's a picture
Of a boy at the back of your retinas.”

If only you would turn
And see me. I think I'm nice,

 

And you're nice, too.
Does that mean we're compatible?

 

And look! We go to the same
School, at the same hour,

 

And under the same sun.
The blossoms are fluttering

 

From the fruitless cherry tree.
But is
this
fruitless? I'm flying

 

In and out of your shadow,
Stepping up steps,

 

Down steps, slowing
For water at the drinking fountain,

 

And bending over to tie my shoe.

 

If only you would turn
And see me

 

Seeing you.

At the beginning of baseball season,
You spoke of the distance between like and love.
This made me bite my lower lip in worry.
I think you were telling me something—
Are you done with me? Is your life all baseball?
Or maybe there's another girl.
I've seen your eyes slide away from me
And look at others. Okay, I'm jealous.
Now, from the bleachers, I watch each thing
You do—touching your cap,
Digging dirt from your cleats—and think
You're telling me something,
Like the third-base coach
Touching his nose and mouth.

 

Is that a sign for you to run?

I went to class, sat in a chair
That wobbled and rocked. Got up

 

And changed seats.
I got up again, and again.

 

That's how I happened
To sit next to you.

I knew you were in love.
At the restaurant you raced to get the door,
And while the sign said PULL,
You pushed, the heels of your shoes
Losing traction. People gathered around us,
Confused, as you begged, “No, no, let me!”
But you pushed instead of pulled.
Sweat glistened on your upper lip
And your face—I can still see it—was red.
You stopped. You informed the crowd, “It's stuck.”
When a little old lady stepped up to open the door,
Everyone rudely rushed in front of us—
We had to wait twenty minutes for a table.

 

Okay, I exaggerate. But not when I say
I knew you were in love with me,
And I with you, the boy pushing ahead in life.

When I heard the phrase
I long for you,
I first thought it was bad grammar
And then began to think,
No, it's something like
long
book,
Long
movie,
long
drive to look
At the mountains or the sea,
Or it's Dad examining
Every dinosaur bone and dinosaur egg
At the Natural History Museum—
Now that's long! But when I turned
Thirteen, I finally understood,
And so did my classmate Jennifer Lee,
Her pretty face red for Brandon.
I asked, “How do you say 'I long for you'
In Mandarin?” and she said, "
Wo xi huan ni.
"
I really didn't understand what she was saying,
But now I know what she meant.