He was touching me where no one
had touched me before, there,
in my grandfather’s old green Buick
that wouldn’t go in reverse,
so all the while I was worrying
how he’d get the car turned around
and headed back to his school,
there as we were under the dark pines
and his whispering Some day we’ll be able
to have each other completely, which thrilled me
even more than the touching though I knew
it was too formal for real passion, real passion
made you say things the nuns swore would damn
your soul, and what if they could see me now,
with my hair falling down and my lips
kissed raw and this prep school boy’s hand
there, and there, and my heart knocking
the way it should have when the priest rang
the bells at Mass, and the Buick so wide
I worried he’d scrape against the pines
and then he whispered We have to stop Do you know why
we have to stop and I nodded, thinking he meant
curfew, so I sat up and felt along the cloth
seat for my hairpins and redid my French twist
and nothing happened, he swung the Buick around
and we slipped past the pines with our headlights
still out and when we got there, I slid
behind the wheel and drove down the mountain
knowing something had happened I couldn’t reverse
anymore than I could the Buick, knowing I wanted it,
no matter what the nuns said, I wanted it, I could feel
my body wet and alive as if there had been a birth.