Before you, I had only ever charmed the body
I would later learn to call my own. The slide
of staircase banister, the bounce of horseback ride:
I discovered early, like most girls, how to meet my own need.
So when you came to me, Rosemarie, with your mouth
of summer strawberries, I did not wonder how to
undress you, where to touch, how to shell you open
and eat both husk and seed, the slow work of coaxing out your sound.
In the midnight blue of July we ran, giggling and shrieking
down to the swimming pool, tossed off our thin nightgowns
and knifed our bodies through the shrill surface of the
cool water. I pressed my lips into you, my legs tangling
around your waist, your back up against the wall at the edge
of the pool. We did not speak; we took turns breathing;
we imagined each other as boys, as men, as movie stars,
as the grown women we would one day paint ourselves into.
We fucked each other without knowing any of the adult words
for our body parts, for the ways in which we loved each other
shamelessly, there in the shelter of that pool in the middle of the night until
our fingers pruned and our wet bodies, uncoiling, pounded out loud with gratitude.
