local_library Before Our Bodies Became

by Shelby Vane

Published in Issue No. 215 ~ April, 2015

For B.B.

 

We were virgins until we weren’t,

dancing sexless around your bedroom

where the gnats found our sweat

 

at the napes. We’d lay in the bed

your mother made up, hands drawn

to our sides, nunning our bodies. We

 

imagined what it was like to be touched

 

the way we had always dreamed

of being touched. I want a boy

to kiss here, and you’d run your pointer

 

across your collarbone with that scar

that I stared at every day during lunch.

Years later, long after we’d last spoke,

 

someone told me you were gay. You were

a woman undressing another woman,

touching her the way you had always dreamed

 

of being touched, and I was still here,

jerking off my guy with discount lube

from the new CVS across the way.

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Shelby Vane is a poet currently living in Maryland. She has been selected for residencies at Tin House Writers' Workshop and The Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been published in SOFTBLOW, Summerset Review, Words Dance Publishing, and Polaris, among others.