Remember

I have to remember to look at you

As a person
And less of a window

Now and not three years ago

I'm going to remember to look at you

To see your skin as your own and not next to mine
Not on a child with half of your chromosomes and the paleness of mine

I'll try not to be disillusioned by the feel of your hands

I'm going to look at you
To look at you
I'm looking at you
And not through you...

Not following the strings of all the ways I've known you right into the past

Where everything smells of baby powder, and lonliness, and freightening new dreams

I am telling myself that if I love you it's for the flesh in front of me
Not for being half of the love of my life...
I grab your flesh to remind myself that you are human and flesh and now

I remember
I remember your eyes
Only because I prepared myself to look at them everyday
To send them to preschool
To send them to daycare
To rock them to sleep
I remember your eyes

Demon

She told me someone would have to cast out this demon
Apparently the same way they did from her the first time someone touched that little girl and she realized what shame feels like when it's not yours to carry but sits with you and picks at you all the same...

She said it's not me and not him and there's nothing to be done
Except cast out the demon

And I wanted to ask her what the demons name was
Statutory rape?
Home wrecker?
Can't beat them off with a stick?

But even under her Sunday school clothes I could see that she was too fragile for my off color jokes so I didn't ask.

She said,
"It's not what you look like or what you say or even what you do, it's the demon."

A Christianish justification for the first man who unfastened her pants and the next and the next and...

She said its a demon

I wanted to ask...
Is the demon in his early 40's because that's the age most the men who listen seem to be and I'm just trying to make sense of this...?

I was 12, at camp, and she said it's a demon that draws married men to you.

Then as politely as possible, I told her to fuck off.

I hope her justification still holds up.

Honestly

I used to write

But I'm afraid of the page
Of the truth
That maybe if I spell it out it won't look right
And I won't know to do with that...

Because honesty has always looked more clear in black and white
And I'm afraid