steven

[https://fineartamerica.com/featured/tire-swing-darren-greenwood.html]

steven was a boy

with a name like butter

on my wind-chapped lips,

like marbles in the

pit of my juice box stomach,

like heat between thighs

just old enough to

straddle a poorly hung

tire swing over filmy lakes

in august heat

 

and

 

I bled for the first time

at a sleepover

somewhere between the

singe of burnt popcorn and

the nineties television

we played whisper-down-the-lane

as my innocence clung to my thighs

 

three girls in polyester

nightgowns

all differing shades of pink

thin hair, thin lips, thin minds

stuffed tissues in their

training bras while I

shifted on my pillow seat and

thought of him.

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for a moment, the earth was still.

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/breathtaking-surreal-art-6

Before she had hips,

the world was already

rolling                                               away from her.

 

By the time she was fifteen

the soles of her feet were

worn as her grandmother’s hands,

cracked into         minuscule maps

of paths she shouldn’t have known.

The shelves were not yet

draped in dust.

 

She reached out her fingers

in a              years           long vapor

of deciphering the lands

on her skin.

She followed the sky just to

see where it went,

eyeless in a rain storm

was no different than here.

 

Breathless from the

chasing

she’d grown old as the

earth.

Grasping at stones

she lay in the grass,

scouring nonsensical

geography

from her feet.

 

Unable to stand

she sunk

knees and elbows

into the damp beneath her.

The wind paused to

dress her and

for a moment,                  the earth was still.

 

our beds could have been the soft earth

 

in summer sun

maybe I was ten

the soft soles of my feet

floated over river rocks

like hot coals

a rite of passage

a display of bravery

while water the color

of hot tea

cinched around our waists

 

those days we

welcomed the night

tacky in the crooks

of our arms

we folded

scabbed knees

in circles around

a lowlight fire

 

our youth was

smooth like glass

 

and our beds

could have been

the soft earth