She sat in history class and dragged her pencil oh so slowly across her lips. Her eyes closed, her breath held, she is lost in the imagined embrace of that boy or this boy. When the bell rang she looked around nervously. She did it again in math class.
She did not know anything until the lights went out and her sister's boyfriend pulled her to him and put his lips on hers. When the candles came out it was long over and they both pretended like nothing happened.
The beautiful girl riding her bicycle fast, her eyes closed and her face open to the embrace of the wind. She steals away with their secret. She lets the bike fall and lays in the grass. She finds herself. Her sister's little smirk makes sense now. She understands her mother's happiness some mornings. She remembers the day of the bloody bedsheet differently, now.
She decides to leave her bike there and tell her parents it was stolen.
She masters the strange art of makeup.
She cultivates her beauty.
She grows into her imagined self.
Love her God now, love her only thought.
Things like college a place for meeting men. Work, a place to practice endearing herself to others.
Oh, a girl's sacred right to grow up to be an adulteress.
She sits in the park. She catches the eyes of men. She can't help it, her curiosity is too strong.
She catches my eye.
I make believe I don't have to be home at the usual hour today. I change my course.
I sit next to her on the bench.
We look out at the evening crowd. These two pirates of the heart set apart from the crowd by our love's ambition. We sit there with racing hearts and enjoy it. It drives every other thought away.
We watch everyone go home. Our stillness. The bench an anchor, we've escaped the pull of the crowd but time persists. We travel in time together, as it were.
The wind begins to pick up. It strained the roots of the trees, it pushed the branches all to one side. Soon the leaves were stripped and the trees bare. The naked trees like wicked hands come up from the Earth with a will to secure something floating on the wind.
The wind stopped like we knew it would and it all settled on the ground. Finally the sun has set.
Our faults, our misdeeds hidden in the dark of the night. We no longer have to make amends.
We turn to each other.
No need for formalities, in the dark.
