I wasn’t scared, sitting on the sofa

together when the movie was over,  

expecting to be more-or-less denied 

(accept that it might not be, and it might,

except it won't), in the distant-siren 

city-silence. No, I was terrified: 

Was my victimhood not quite black-and-white?

“You get me but can't have me,” she stated,

“must earn it,” but sooner than I told her,

“I told you yesterday that yesterday 

was long ago, and restaged kissings you 

goodnight were dutifully belated 

prayers,” she fell asleep. The very next

morning she’d aged ten years, beautifully.

She wore the same scarlet hairband each day

regardless of outfit, like a labcoat,

and I'd fallen, charmed by the chant of rote

recurrence I might've loved her despite,

the girl I'd see mornings but never talk

to, who'd then betrayed me with her boyfriend;

our scarlet potential rendered bone white.

Beautiful women in New York – don't they

all seem to head straight for you, like buses

the second you step down from the sidewalk?

I’d like my recurring bit part to end,

please, for the need grows increasingly dire

to weigh the sorrow of sex work versus

the monastic repression of desire.

I set the dial for nineteen eighty-

something; summer; my own sun-baked front yard. 

Park in house-shadow, cricket-din, amongst 

the “wheat” and Queen Anne’s lace back there, sneak in

the house, up the stairs; from Tom’s bed (Tom’s bed;

taboo even now [then]), watch my old self 

watching for my older sister’s school (late

summer? early?) bus to heave its folding 

door and drop her off, through the pine tree V. 

And that's it. I sneak out of the window

(like i always wish i had [now(then)]), set

the dial for today, dinnertime-ish, 

return to find the house dark, the table 

cleared apart from one foil-covered dish.