I owe you an explanation. <br />My first memory isn’t your own <br />of an empty box. My babyhood cabinets held <br />a countlessness of cakes, my backyard <br />rotted into apple glut, windfalls of <br />money-tree, mouthfuls of fib. <br /> <br />At puberty I liked the locks, <br />I was the one who made them fast. <br />The yelling in our hallways was about <br />lost money, or lost love, but not <br />lost life. Or so I see it now: <br />in those days I romanticized <br />a risk (I thought I’d die <br />in the alcoholic automobile, die <br />at the hands of nerveless dentistry). Small hearts <br />were printed in the checkbook; when my parents called me <br />dear, they meant expensive. <br /> <br />Where were you in all that time? Out looking for <br />your father’s body? Making for your mother’s room? <br />I got my A’s in English, civics, <br />sweetness and light; you got black eyes, and F’s, <br />and nowhere fast. By 1967 when we met <br />(if you could call it making an acquaintance, <br />rape) I was a mal-adjusted gush, a sucker for <br />placebos. Walking home from Central Square, I came to have <br />the good girl’s petty dread: the woman <br /> <br />to whose yard you dragged me might <br />detect us, and be furious. More than anything else <br />I wanted no one mad at me. (Propriety, <br />or was it property, I thought <br />to guard: myself I gave away.) <br /> <br />And as for you, you had the shakes, <br />were barely seventeen yourself, too raw <br />to get it up (I said don’t be afraid, <br />afraid of what might happen if you failed). <br />And afterwards, in one of those moments <br />it’s hard to tell (funny from fatal) you did <br />a terrible civility: you told me <br /> <br />thanks. I’ll never forget <br />that moment all my life. <br />It wasn’t until then, as you <br />were sheathing it to run, <br /> <br />I saw the knife.<br /><br />Heather McHugh<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/amenities/
