She was older, sleek, and had a bite to her, but I was bolder with my knees on either side of her.

Ava taught me how to smoke
in the woods behind our high-school dorm.

 

Always the unbearable—the sting of her demands,
the threats, the way she kept me from my friends—

The dust of the stable
still on me,
I sidled on up

 

The young arrive adorned.
They shiver in the light,

The one who held her hair up off her neck
and asked me to unclasp her dress