Perhaps my father was the first,

with his absence,

except for the rare storms from his daytime slumber

to terrorize us into quiet so he could sleep.

I once got caught in the cross fire of his flying hands.

I was not yet 3.

My older sisters squealed and screamed him awake.

But I was too naive to run.

Before that, he was the myth my mother made us believe

about fatherhood and tender love.

 

But the one I can summons from memory caves

was the gorgeous boy

with the ass long shiny silk brown hair

and tan flawless skin sunk into Italian brown eyes.

I was 13 and he 15.

He paid me attention, walked with me at night

on a quiet moon-lit road named Candlewood as we

murmured our intentions, our future married selves

–or I did.

I couldn’t believe he was interested in me, a brainy

average-looking girl with the wrong kind of hair–

refusing to hang long from a middle combed part.

 

And a week after that walk under the old gibbous moon,

when I told him I wanted to marry a bodily lover,

he failed to appear, non-responsive, ghosted–

and I cried the cliché with a painful heart, torn

and scorned, never to be stabbed the same again,

my pillows my week-long companions in sob-town.

 

Though others made Caesar of my heart, dagger

hurlers and stabbers, I remember them vaguely.

Not like that first cut, the baptismal soul’s sarcophagus.