Parchment
There were three of them, boys,
and while I was laying on top of a wide wall
where couples kissed, ditched school
one of them sat on my chest, and I laughed
tried to push him but I had no hands—
he pulled down my shirt and with a permanent
fine-tip pen he wrote on my chest, even
on the skin stretched right over my ribs, as if
he was etching into glass.
To expand my chest with breath was to push
against the sharp tip; to writhe
was to have him press harder, to ensure his writing
clear.
What did he write? WORDS, WORDS, WORDS.
It was summer and I had no sweatshirt
to cover them. My mother asked
what was all over me as I walked to the shower.
