I lost my virginity in the sand

on a makeshift beach-towel bed

Crisp water wisped over us

Tasting salt-soaked skin

we explored each other’s bodies with our lips

learning which places longed to be touched and licked His rhythm mirrored the tide’s motion

Ear nipping between pleased moans

 

Sometimes my first time is beneath 

    high school bleachers
Other times it’s in the closet at Christian Bible Camp Peers’ ears pressed curiously to the door

 

But my favorite is in the basement of
    Ahlgrim’s Funeral Home
during my grandmother Florence’s wake

Legs open on a cold, metal embalming table

The freshly dead silently witnessing a wild surge
    of carpe diem
Sperm splattered over my stomach

creating patterns Jackson Pollock would envy
Fear of the impending oblivion

urged taking full advantage

of the pleasures our Earthly bodies offered
among the corpses

waiting to be boxed, gift wrapped, shipped to
    their afterlife

 

Tales I recite when asked—
fabricated cacophony of memoir
picassos any evidence of truth

 

That I was eleven and he was

an unwelcome guest between my legs

 

I can’t tell people that I was discarded

like a used condom after a heavy night of
    binge drinking

I can’t tell people that it felt like broken mirror pieces
    ripping me open
I can’t tell people that I was too afraid to cry

and that I hugged tightly to the person hurting me

because I needed comfort

 

I never again saw the man with the mirror
Years later I skimmed his obituary
Cancer ate him from the inside out

 

There were days I couldn’t remember reasons for living

and when I did the reasons didn’t seem that convincing

 

Nightmares, screaming,

waking drenched

a mixture of sweat with guilt

a blur of flashbacks as if whirling in my head
Slicing my wrists to cope through the rotations
scissor blades and Effexor—

a satiating symbiotic relationship

keeping the Shakespearean swan song at bay

 

I tried dating

forgetting

reaching for a new notebook, a clean page

one that didn’t begin as a sequel to my
    eleven-year-old self
But no matter how I hid my pens from my subconscious pieces of past bled into the pages, soaking the binding

Dark letters

scrawled in a handwriting not my own edited the story Added to the Preface

foreshadowing motifs

that killed off any new male protagonist

 

Then I met someone

 

And one evening while in my car

parking lot lights reflected off the rearview mirror
as we discussed the mundane details of life
while waiting for Godot

he noticed my scars and

for the first time

I shared my story, the real story

and instead of viewing me as shattered

 

he lifted my arm to his lips

and compassionately kissed each slice
My eleven-year-old self found closure

 

and even though my wounds had scarred over years ago they finally began to heal

 

 

 

 

Dedicated to victims of sexual assault. It may be hard to see right now but life will get better--don’t give up.