Lined up for first
confession,
I totally forgot:
walking home with Laura
from catechism class
I’d laughed
at her dirty joke.
For years,
I’d thought I was
so innocent then.
The laugh
gives the lie.
Our first communion day,
my long white
stockings
kept sliding down
around my
knobby knees.
But what a swan
Laura was,
gliding to the rail
in her pale
blond braid,
the skin beneath
her eyes
so transparent
it looked bruised.