Ancient History

You were peach skin stretched on steel,
posed on an abandoned dock,
a student of Eakins on a rock,
about to jump in on my dare
to where I’d swum out
in the warm lake water
after we’d both stripped bare. 

We deserved each other.
I was the little brother
you never had and wanted,
not least to overpower. 
My nose in books,
I told you things
you’d never heard about,
weren’t even sure were true,
and you were like a man to me.

When we were in darkness together for the first time
it was a really warm night for March. We climbed
the stairs to the main door of our school
where it was darker still in the shadow of cedars.
Behind you was the balustrade above the playground
where we’d met and taken a liking to each other.
We kissed until our minds were wet.

One Sunday that summer it was super-hot
and I was home reading as you were not
and mother went to the door at your knock
and in a lilt called back to me Mike’s here.

The school was all locked up, the grounds
deserted. We sat out of sight of the street
on a broad, low concrete step under a long wide
portico of painted sheet aluminum, listening
for anyone or anything.
We were completely alone, we heard.
Our bodies pressed wherever our shirts could.
Our shirts were shed.
There was no breathable air
above where we struggled and bled.

We lay there in each other’s arms
eyes closed and half asleep until
some lights along the portico
switched on and one right overhead
that bathed us both in fear.
We never thought to listen for the lights.

We stood side by side
on unmown school lawn
facing a narrow street
in a small slow town.
We were the children of sin.
We were madly kin.
You had to get home,
was all you said.
The rest of that life went for nothing.

First published in Brown Bag Journal: Art in Conversation