Like everything delicious, I was warned against it.

Those mornings, I’d slowly descend the stairs

in my plaid Catholic school uniform skirt, find my parents

eating behind newspapers, coned in separate silences.

The only music was the throat-clearing rasp of toast

being scraped with too-little butter, three passes

of the blade, kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, battle hymn of the eighties.

When I pulled the butter close, my mother’s eyes

would twitch to my knife, measuring my measuring--

the goal, she’d shared from Weight Watchers,

a pat so thin the light shines through. If I disobeyed,

indulged, slathered my toast to glistening lace,

I’d earn her favorite admonition, predictable as Sunday’s

dry communion wafer: “A moment on the lips . . .”

I couldn’t stop my head from chiming, forever on the hips.

Hips? They were my other dangerous excess.

I was growing them in secret beneath my skirt,

and when I walked the dog after breakfast

and a truck whooshed past from behind, the trucker’s eyes

sizzling mine in his rear view, I knew my secret

wouldn’t stay a secret long. They were paired, up top,

by a swelling, flesh rising like cream to fill, then overfill

the frothy training bra. Everything softening on the shelf,

milk-made. Meanwhile, at breakfast, sitting on my secret,

I’d concede, scrape kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, lay down

my weapon, dry toast sticking in my craw. I’d think

of the girl from school, seventeen to my fourteen,

who crawled out the window of first-period bio

to meet her boyfriend from the Navy base. She’d collar

his peacoat, draw his mouth to her white neck,

or so I kept imagining. Slut, the girls whispered, watching

her struggling back through the window, throat

pinked from cold and his jaw’s dark stubble,

kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr. Only fourth period,

and already I was hungry for lunch, or something.

Thank you, Republican parents, thank you,

Catholic education, thank you, Reganomics—

words I never knew I’d write. But I hereby acknowledge

repression’s inadvertent gifts. Folks who came of age

in liberal families, permissive cities, the free-love sixties,

how far they must go to transgress—

Vegas, latex, sex tapes, a sugaring of the nostrils?

Yet how close at hand rebellion is for me.

Merely making married love with my married husband,

I’m a filthy whore. Merely sitting down to breakfast

and raising the butter knife, I’m living on the edge.

—2019

^{—after a photograph by Alvin Baltrop}

He looks through the wound of my life like it’s light. So I let him. The last cube of ice. Outside the tray. Where I found him. My lover. Melts atop this brick, as if it’s our last whiskey together. His brown, more fragrant, more dangerous than whiskey. You couldn’t miss him. Nothing lasts. Of promise. Such is the promise of light. Not even day breaks between us. Black joy, cresting over and over the summer sun. Kept a spiral of his hair, in a box, like a favour. His favourite pair of trainers. The taste of his lips where we first kissed. Where we first blissed. I couldn’t— though I tried. To keep him. Wouldn’t keep. Still. Nor true. Keep up. How could he keep me, when he refused to keep time? Didn’t keep me in compliments. Was I supposed to keep sweet? Look. We discovered day like it was fire. Flesh, like empire. Touch like bloodlight. Yes. Count me down like a missile. As of tomorrow and the day after. As of this darkening gelatin and silver. As of the moon and the monsoon rain. As of these piers. As of America and all its splendour. As of the alleyway and the archive. As of this F-stop. And this fuck. And the next. As of this click and shutter. As of the daffodil and every queer thing that obliterates winter.