Bike Ride with Older Boys

The one I didn't go on.

 

I was thirteen,

and they were older.

I'd met them at the public pool. I must

 

have given them my number. I'm sure

 

I'd given them my number,

knowing the girl I was. . .

 

It was summer. My afternoons

were made of time and vinyl.

My mother worked,

but I had a bike. They wanted

 

to go for a ride.

Just me and them. I said

okay fine, I'd

meet them at the Stop-n-Go

at four o'clock.

And then I didn't show.

 

I have been given a little gift—

something sweet

and inexpensive, something

I never worked or asked or said

thank you for, most

days not aware

of what I have been given, or what I missed—

 

because it's that, too, isn't it?

I never saw those boys again.

I'm not as dumb

as they think I am

 

but neither am I wise. Perhaps

 

it is the best

afternoon of my life. Two

cute and older boys

pedaling beside me—respectful, awed. When we

 

turn down my street, the other girls see me ...

 

Everything as I imagined it would be.

 

Or, I am in a vacant field. When I

stand up again, there are bits of glass and gravel

ground into my knees.

I will never love myself again.

Who knew then

that someday I would be

 

thirty-seven, wiping

crumbs off the kitchen table with a sponge, remembering

them, thinking

of this—

 

those boys still waiting

outside the Stop-n-Go, smoking

cigarettes, growing older.

 

Laura Kasischke, Dance and Disappear (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002)