A Boy Will Do Anything
A Boy Will Do Anything
My father felt it his duty
to hold instructional dinners—
astronomy, physics and especially
regarding the ways of men
Seduction, flattery, lies, connivery
A boy will do anything to get into a girl’s pants.
Playboy that he was,
he encouraged us to be glamorous
assured us sex was marvelous
hastily added —it is the natural consequence of true love
My sister and I would stare at our plates
squirm at graphic anatomy lessons—
microscopic sperm able to swim up your leg
Saturdays, our mother mostly quiet,
alternated the menu from hamburgers
to hot dogs with ketchup
while my father fed us the new vocabulary
clitoris, condom, ejaculation, STD
What he said—
if you can’t be good be careful
meant little those nights
in the front seat of my boyfriend’s car
an older boy attending the high school
across town, basketball hands loosening straps
snaps, zippers. the wet dark of it
The insistence of nature and a body
much bigger than my own.
What sixteen year old girl
has not punched herself hard
in the stomach, doubled over
to crush the unknown
flung herself belly down on a rail fence
considered what she could shove
up inside herself
when a month later
the blood will not come.
The horror of cells multiplying
into a monster that will swell up
huge and overwhelming and
the whole world will know
one tiny moment of surrender.
