I danced with the boys at catholic school

i had my glamour kept it tucked away in a plastic container
for no one else to take i had my candor every honest dog barks before fed
or abandoned i had that splendor a landscape before it’s lost its shape
i had that water in me i watered me daily until my cheeks were rosy
every spring i bloomed i made myself new & lovely at night
i howled the rowdy tune of the coyotes banged the lids of trash cans
in the neighborhood all throughout the streets the stray cats meowed
along overcoming their fear of being eaten just for a moment
i danced wildly in my room my mother kept her love of the commotion
a secret i rode in mustangs driven by girls with long tangled hair
our curls rippled in the wind illuminated by the reflection of the headlights
against the cracked concrete of the streets on spring break we hung
around the docks went skinny dipping no one was supposed to know
i got naked on camera for one of the boys at school
i offered to blow him down by the chapel but he chickened out before home
-room on Sunday afternoons i met up with men in their thirties drank forties
my body was electric in their collective embrace back then i prayed to god
i felt holy in religion class i’d recite my favorite passage Genesis 6:17:
“I am going to bring flood waters on the earth to destroy all life
under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it.
Everything on earth will perish.”