The Touch
by Clara Vy
It was a kind of graze, lightly in passing,
so that when I walked by him it could not be remembered
whose fingers belonged where, and who was touched, when.
In the alleyway the stray dog barked and I tried,
but did not want to, become a cartographer of my own body.
Back through the doorway where it happened, I push crumpled bills into the vendor’s palm
—the woman who sells me bánh mì tươi at each day’s inception and yawning conclusion,
and knowing my girlhood inside out, she might’ve tried to, but didn’t,
protect me if she had known.
I walk back to my bike and there they are for just a second, but
for a second time, and I know.
A man’s steady fingers, and a shifting inside the part of me between innocence
and something else—the part where they’ll meet and join my lower torso.
The barking crescendos and I try, but cannot bring myself to, get a full look at his face,
and the tight grip of my fingers on the handlebars drain the arteries white,
and I will steer away from him, dodging the stray dog on the ride home.